So what else can you offset by going green?

I've gotten a pretty good response from my last post, so I figured We'd discuss some other areas where going green can benefit you.  Since we're on the subject of budgeting, lets talk about your water bill.  If your like most Americans, you live in a town or city where water is controlled and billed along with your sewer usage.  Lets try to offset that shall we?
Today we're going to talk about gray water, and water reclamation.  Gray water is water used for basic use (non drinking) such as washing dishes, getting a shower, watering the lawn, washing the car, etc.  Water reclamation is reclaiming waste water, either rainwater or gray water, and recycling it for further use.

The easiest method of cutting down on water expenses is to place a  rain barrel under your gutter downspouts.  A rain barrel is a 50 gallon black or blue food grade barrel, usually found relatively cheap (less then $20.00 on craigslist). these barrels will collect the water run off from your roof, and store it for later use.  A simple faucet tap attached to the side of the barrel at the bottom  allows you to use this water later for watering your lawn, washing your car, watering your garden, etc.  while this may not be a huge offset, every penny counts, and considering they charge you by the gallon, (on average $0.19 a gallon is the national average) it can add up.  Let's look at it this way, 5 gallons is almost a dollar, that means a 50 gallon barrel is about 10 bucks in water.  The average household uses almost 1000 gallons of water a month washing their car, watering their lawn, and doing laundry.  With the addition of a $5.00 filter if your laundry is in the basement like mine, this water can offset all of these functions, saving you almost $200.00 a month not only does it save you money, but if you live in drought prone areas, when everyone else had a dieing lawn and a dirty car, yours is still vibrant and fresh.