Wasting Green on Green: The Tale of the $120 Rain Barrel

Now for something completely different. Canadian Tire is selling a 180L rain barrel for $120, on sale this week for a pittance of $100! It's being marketed as a "green" alternative that could save up to 40% on your summer water bill. (we all know that "up to 40%" usually means somewhere in the ball park of 0%-1%) This is the perfect example on wasting green on green. Rather than just picking on this company for charging an outrageous amount of money for something so simple, I've decided to take up the challenge and make something myself that's identical for half the cost.

The nuts and bolts of this expensive barrel seems to be what amounts to a plastic garbage can & spigot and something to connect it to a downspout. I don't need one as big as 180L so I decided to go with either a 121L (32 gal) or 77L (21gal) plastic garbage can, which can be obtained at Home Depot for $11 and $17 respectively. A metal spigot (essentially just an outdoor tap) costs about $10, probably less, and is more durable than the plastic one on the CT barrel. A screen to keep bugs out will cost maybe $2 at most, though I might already have that. I also already have silicone caulk to assemble it. My goal is to spend no more than $50 ($30 ideally) on the entire project to build a usable rain barrel. I might have to set up eves and a downspout for where I want to put it but I'm not factoring that into the cost of the project since the CT barrel assumes you already have that in place. Why am I doing this? No, I haven't gone to the green dark side. It's more of a proof of theory that the green industry is a huge scam. Of course I'll update my progress as I go along.