Water Resources Protection
Water Facts
- 2/3 of the earth is covered in water
- 2.5% of the earth’s water is fresh
- 90% of the fresh water is frozen
- Therefore, only 0.25% of the earth’s water is available for human consumption
Water (1)
Water is the most valuable substance on Earth, even though it makes up 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. Water serves two purposes in our everyday lives: we use it for bathing and for consumption. It is also an easily contaminated liquid, and since less than one percent of our water supply is usable for these purposes, it becomes even more valuable. (1)
Water conservation plays an important role because we have a limited supply of fresh water available. Saving water around the house, such as turning off the faucet while brushing your teeth, is a step in the right direction. Much of our water comes from natural sources such as rivers, so conserving also involves not contaminating these sources with substances like oil, litter and cigarette butts.
Something to keep in mind is that “it all ends up in the water”; anything put down street drains eventually ends up in a natural body of water without being treated. When it rains, anything from the streets will also be washed down the drain as well, including oil from cars, hazardous chemicals, pet waste and trash. We also need to be careful about what gets flushed down our toilets. Household hazardous waste (HHW),including unused medications and oil, should never be dumped into toilets or drains.
Every time you swim, bathe and play in a natural body of water (river, ocean, etc.), you are affected by both the natural condition of the water as well as any materials that have been dumped into it.
Breaking Down the Water Supply (2)
Water is a common chemical substance, essential to all known forms of life. About 1,460,000,000,000,000 (1,460 trillion) tons of water covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, but relatively little is suitable for consumption. In many parts of the world, suitable water is in very short supply.
Let’s scale the world’s water supply to a size easier to comprehend like 58 gallons, about the same as a really full bathtub.
- a full 55 gallon drum of that waterish saltwater ocean.
- About 10 pounds of ice is locked in polar ice caps and glaciers.
- About one drop is in the atmosphere as vapor, clouds, and precipitation.
- Another drop is in our soil, and part of life itself (our bodies are made up mostly of water, for instance).
Our drinking water sources:
- Almost one gallon of that water is below ground in aquifers.
- Three-fourths of this is polluted or otherwise unavailable to us.
- We are left with less than a liter of this water to live on.
- About four tablespoons of that is in surface water such as rivers and lakes.
How much water is used?
- Brushing teeth with the water on = 5 gallons
- Faucet dripping 60 times a minute each day = 6gallons
- Average shower = 25-30 gallons
- Full bath = 36 gallons
- To make one glass of milk = 65 gallons
- To make one new car = 39,000 gallons
- To produce one acre of cotton = 800,000 gallons
- Flushing the toilet once requires as much water as some people in developing countries have available all day long
Water Conservation Tips (3)
Long Showers – if you are spending more than five minutes in the shower, you are literally pouring resources down the drain, with every minute you linger under the standard showerhead using four to six gallons of water. If it’s more like 10minutes, over the course of a year you could be wasting enough water to fill a backyard pool and creating an extra 2,200 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions just from the energy used to heat the water. TIP: Cut your average shower time from 10 to 5 minutes, insulate your hot water tank, which can eliminate 1,100 pounds of greenhouse gases each year, and set the thermostat of your water heater to a lower temperature. You can also install a low-flow shower fitting to reduce the water flow by 50 percent or more while maintaining ample water pressure. Look for efficient plumbing fixtures with the EPA’s Water Sense® label.
Toilets– Toilets use by far the most water in the home, consuming nearly 40percent of residential water use. More than 4.8 billion gallons of water are flushed down toilets every day in the USA– that’s 9,000 gallons of water per person every year. An old-style, single-flush toilet can use more than three gallons of water in one flush; modern reduced-flow systems average little more than one gallon. A high-efficiency toilet (HET) gives the same flush with no trade-off in power and can reduce household toilet water use by about 60 percent per year, providing a significant savings on your water bill. TIP: If you have an old toilet, reduce its capacity by filling one or more soft-drink bottles with water and placing them in the toilet tank. Look for HET label when purchasing a new toilet, and fix your leaky toilets: They waste 200 gallons of water everyday.
Dish Washing – Sinks and dishwashers account for 15 percent of average household water use and hundreds of pounds of greenhouse gases in hot-water heating. An average automatic dishwasher can use more than 10.5 gallons of water per cycle; an efficient model uses half that. Doing the dishes the old-fashioned way can save water, however,running the faucet wastes more than 2.5 gallons of water a minute. TIP: Wash and rinse items together instead of individually. Reduce water flow by half without reducing water pressure by installing inexpensive aerators or flow valves in your faucets, and air-dry your dishes instead of using your dishwasher’s drying cycle. Look for the Energy Star® label when buying a new dishwasher; it will significantly lower your utility bills.
Reference Sources: back to top
- “Water.”
http://earth911.org. 2008. Earth 911. 13 Aug. 2008
http://earth911.org/for-students/students/high-schoolcollege/water/ - “Breaking Down the Water Supply.”
http://earth911.org. 2008. Earth 911. 13 Aug. 2008
http://earth911.org/water/breaking-down-the-water-supply/ - Bonnin, Jenny and Kim McKay
True Green
Washington, D.C.:National Geographic Society, 2006.