Special Reports

Save Money And Resources With Rain Barrels

Are you spending countless hours this summer trying to keep your plants, lawn and trees alive?

CBS 2 Meteorologist Don Schwenneker reports rain barrels can provide an easy way to help you save money, and do the environment a good turn, too.

Every year we get just over 38 inches of liquid precipitation. That's almost 3 feet of water. And you can put that water to work at your home. Not only do rain barrels help the environment, they can help you save money too.

It's simple. By attaching a rain barrel to any downspout at your house, you can catch rain and use it later. But this concept isn't really new.

"Your grandmother might have had one, and they just went out of focus as we became free with our water use," said conservation specialist Jim Kleinwachter of the Conservation Foundation in Naperville. "A typical home can generate as much as 200 gallons on a quarter-inch rain."

Using that rain water on your garden or plants can reduce your water bill. Plus, rain water is untreated so it doesn't have chemicals in it like chlorine.

Wheaton resident Jeannine Kannegiesser and members of her church group are all buying barrels.

"It saves energy, it's better for the plants. I also think it's my way of protecting the resources for the next generation," Kannegiesser said.

It's those future generations that may have to deal with not only water shortages, but the long term effects of pesticide runoff in creeks and streams. Eventually those pollutants make their way to big bodies of water, like Lake Michigan. And using these barrels is a good way to start the whole conservation process.

"When we capture water in a rain barrel and water our gardens and flowers with it, it slowly percolates back into the ground and the water still gets to the streams, but it gets there in a more natural filtered and metered fashion as opposed to really fast on the surface where it picks up pollutants," said Conservation Foundation President and CEO Brook McDonald.

Beginning conservation in your home is as easy as picking up a rain barrel. Barrels cost $85. The ones from the Conservation Foundation are actually reused pickle and olive barrels that would have ended up taking up space in a land fill. And if you think "I can't put one of those at my house, it's too much work," you're wrong. Click here for a how-to video instruction on the set-up process.

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