Water conservation used to be something people tried out, or implement briefly in their lives as a phase, much like deciding to go green or recycle more. However, we have come to a critical point in the Earth’s live span to where water conservation, which was looked at as a philanthropic task, is now an immediate issue that thousands upon thousands of companies and individuals now dedicate themselves too.
Why should you conserve water?
We realize, as the adage goes, “There Ain’t No Such Thing as A Free Lunch”, and it is hard to conceptualize doing something for what appears to be nothing, or something you can’t see the results of. It’s hard to recycle when it costs you money monthly, and it’s hard to conserve water when we seem to have so much of it, and don’t see the impact of water, without conservation, does, or that the impact conservation can have.
Luckily there are some great, simple, and easy benefits to conserving water at home without needing to change much in your daily routine.
For instance, if you were to simply turn off the faucet when you brush your teeth in the morning and at night, it can save on average 200 gallons of water a month. Additionally, if your average shower lasts 8.2 minutes, and consumers 17.2 gallons or 2.1 gallons per minute, and you switched to 5 minute showers, which means you only use 10.5 gallons instead of the 17.2, that saves you almost an additional 200 gallons of water a month. The average person needs about a gallon of water a day, so simply remembering to turn off a faucet that you would not be using anyway, and showering 3 minutes less, would give 400 people over the course of a month drinking water for a day. Or another way to look at it, each day, giving almost 13 people their daily water intake.
So, how much water does Earth actually have?
Scientists estimate that only 3% of all the water on the Earth is actual fresh water. About 1% is available for drinking, with the rest being frozen solid as glaciers. The world does not always have the most reliable, freshest water, or even have access to it. A great example is in our very own nation, in Flint, Michigan. It’s hard to visualize not having fresh water when it is so readily available to us, but knowing it can hit home as close as Michigan should show how serious our water problem really is. With increasing natural disasters that can containment drinking water, along with our current wastefulness, we must be the era of people that decides to make small, simple changes that have huge, positive impacts.
Conserving Water
We are not asking you to stop using water in a way that impacts your daily life negatively, but to just be aware when you turn on faucets or shower, and help not waste unnecessary water. The concept being “Save water, save a life”.
Here are some more steps you can use to conserve water that don’t have any huge impact on your life.
1. Don’t run the dishwasher or washing machine half way full.
2. Make sure you do not have any leaking toilets or faucets that could have a constant water flow without you realizing it.
3. Replace your shower head with a high water efficacy one. They are designed to maintain a water pressure that is still relaxing, but uses much less water than a normal one.
4. Instead of dumping out your water, place it in an animal’s water bowl, use the rest to water your plants, or any other unique ways you could think of.
5. If you throw away food, use the garbage can for most of the food, instead of your disposal.
