Did you know that the average Sydneysider uses 200L per day! About a quarter of all water used at home is in the shower. Are you spending more than the recommended water wise limit of four minutes? You're not alone but we can all make a difference to help protect our water and the environment.

Cutting your daily shower from eight minutes to four minute saves around 36L of water. Taking shorter showers is just one of many ways to reduce water use and conserve our drinking water. It's also an easy way to reduce your water bill.

Shorter showers can also save up to 350 kilograms of carbon dioxide a year and help cut down your energy bills. See the video from Fight For Planet A: Our Climate Challenge to see how easy it is to use some problem solving and investigation skills. Can you calculate how much water your shower head uses?

Then, head to our WaterFix webpage to see if you're eligible for a FREE shower head replacement.

We'll be live, online on Friday 18th of September for the STANSW - Green Chemistry Conference.
This years themes are Green science and achieving the UN Sustainability Goals such as clean water and sanitation. We'll be showcasing how science in the classroom is used to address real life challenges in water management.

We'll do live demonstrations and recreate some experiences from our excursions programs. You can try these at school even if you don't have a fancy lab. There will also be time for questions and discussions about our upcoming virtual programs.

A copy of our presentation slides is available here.

Just in case you missed this news story earlier this year. We've got very 'impawtant' four-legged staff.

How does this relate to chemistry?

Well, we're just us applying a bit of Module 8, new (old) chemical ideas!

We've known for millennia that man's best friend has a great sense of smell. Scientist have been documenting this for a long time. In fact, it's said they have " smell receptors 10,000 times more accurate than humans".

Think about the parallels of sniffer dogs and 'mechanical sniffers' your studying in the classroom. Analytical tools like mass spectrometry. They both can pick up compounds coming from a source, detecting it and measure certain qualities like the 'strength' of a signal, albeit in very different ways.

We use a range of analytical tools that work great in the Sydney Water Monitoring Services labs, but these very cuddly coworkers are another innovation to help. They complement our other approaches to monitor our water network in the field and protect the environment.