Water Conservation 101
Tapping into the H20 basics
When you turn on the kitchen tap and fill up a glass of water, you probably don't think twice about it. But did you know more than one billion people lack access to a safe supply of drinking water? And by 2025, it's projected that half of the world's population will live in a water-scarce region if today's trends continue. Gulp! One more scary fact: Currently, water-related diseases are the leading cause of death in the world. Here's what you need to know about H2O.
Where that water in your glass comes from
340 billion gallons of fresh water are pulled from rivers, streams and reservoirs every day in the U.S. and cleaned for residential, commercial and industrial uses. That's more than five gallons of water for every person in the world each day.
We're draining our supply
We waste a lot of clean water unnecessarily. The average household uses 350 gallons of water per day. That's enough to fill almost 100 bathtubs. (We're all for staying clean, but that's a lot of baths for one day!) Most household water is used for bathing and for flushing toilets, and an average 15 percent is lost to leaks. Every day, five billion gallons of drinkable water is used to flush toilets in the U.S. Outside the home, your lawn is the thirstiest culprit of all and can be a major drain on our fresh water resources. In states such as California, lawn care accounts for half of a household's water usage.
