Give an example of water waste (in U.S. or other countries). Make suggestions for reducing water waste and quantify the amount of water that could be saved.
According to an article in The Washington Post, Americans wasted 1 trillion gallons of water in the year 2015. But how much really is 1 trillion gallons? Our water waste accounts for 9% of the water needed to solve the California drought problem, which has a deficit of 11 trillion gallons of water. It is also equal to 40 million swimming pools, 24 billion baths, or Lake Okeechobee in Florida.
The EPA states that a lot of the water we waste is due to leaks. The average household wastes nearly 10,000 gallons of water per year due to leaks. Ten percent of households waste more than 90 gallons of water per day due to leaks. Not only does this waste American’s water, leaks also waste American’s money. Fixing household leaks is both cost effective and an effective way of reducing waste.
Besides household leaks, there are a number of other ways to reduce our water waste. Making small changes to our lifestyles is one way to effectively reduce water waste. Individuals can try and take shorter showers, or even turning off their water after wetting their toothbrushes. In addition, I believe more water saving toilets should be installed in public bathrooms, as well as in households, in order to reduce waste. The toilets in our Reamer Campus Center are designed with two different flush settings and help reduce the amount of water used when going to the bathroom. I think that if more of these toilets were installed on campus in places like dorms and Minervas, the Union College community could effectively reduce our water waste.
I found your article extremely interesting because water waste is a significant problem in our current day. The 9% statistic is something that I found very intriguing because that number seems considering all that we do waste on water. And it is also crazy to comprehend that some of the water that we consume isn’t even intentional. It’s merely from just leaks that people may not even know about. I also agree with your statement involving excess water waste from toilet throughout our country.
It is amazing how much small leaks can contribute to water waste. Little things like making sure the faucet is not dripping or that every pipe is secure are so important in reducing our water footprint. I agree that Union should investigate the dual-flush toilets in other buildings, because the amount of water used to flush can be as much as 4 gallons per flush.
I found this quite fascinating, due to the fact that not many people really see the effects of every day activities that use up so much water. The fact that so much water is wasted just from leaving the sink on while brushing teeth or just from taking a longer shower was quite alarming for me to read. More people should know just how much water they really are wasting.
Though leaks seem to be an obvious source of water waste, I feel like we tend to forget about something so simple when talking in terms of sustainability. That being said, I found it interesting that you chose to focus on household water leaks in your post. This week’s blog theme talked about the daily bottled water consumption on campus, but I would like to look further into some of the suggestions you brought up about sustainability at Union.