Week 10 of Green Resolutions had me thinking about the amount of water I consumed daily. After some research, I chose the following actions to carry forth for the rest of the year:
1) Place a bucket in my shower to catch the extra water that otherwise would just go down the drain. I then will use that water to water my plants (I have 10 plants total to water) and any extra I will dump on a tree or bush to place back into our ground water.
2) Turn shower on only to: get it wet initially, rinse shampoo, condition, body soap.
3) Use dish washer instead of hand washing dishes. Why? The average dishwasher uses 6 gallons of water per cycle ; the average Energy Star-rated dishwasher uses 4 gallons per cycle while the average faucet flows at 2 gallons per minute. I don't think Colby and I wash our dishes in 3 minutes… which would be the equivalent of 6 gallons which is all my dish washer uses (if not less because I put it on water saving setting).
4) Make and use a toilet dam. What's that? Watch this video!
Why am I doing all of this?
WE are all water creatures. In fact, most of us and our Earth is made of the stuff.
60% of our body is water
70% of our brain is water
80% of our blood is water
71% of our Earth is water
We can live 1 month without food but only 1 week without water. The same water that existed billions of years ago still exists today; so you may be asking yourself: "What's with this water shortage business?"
What does "water shortage" mean?
Most people know that only a very small percent of our Earths water is suitable for human consumption. In fact, only 3% of Earth's water is fresh (no salt) but most of that is ice so in actuality less than 1% of water is drinkable (.007%).
Water scarcity is the lack of sufficient available water resources to meet the demands of water usage within a region.. The water we can drink can be insufficient for various reasons such as:
Population growth
Food production
Climatic change and variability
Land use
Water quality
Water demand
Access to clean, safe water to drink is also a problem for many. The amount of fresh, uncontaminated water is shrinking due to air and land pollution , sewage, oil discharges from industries, waste dumping into water bodies, radioactive waste from mining activities as well as dirty water from sanitation work in hospitals, hotels, oil companies, mining, schools and restaurants all end up polluting our waters.
In developed countries that use fresh water resources for bathroom use, laundry, dishes, drinking etc. are consuming water at an astronomical rate. In fact, the average American uses 80-100 gallons of water per day; whereas people in "underdeveloped" countries often live on as little as 5 gallons a day.
Please enjoy (a.k.a. study and deeply reflect upon) the following picture facts on water that I obtained from an AWESOME website: Water.org
Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every four hours.
Nearly 1.5 million children under the age of five die every year from diarrhea globally.
Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death among children under five in the world. Around 1.5 million deaths each year - nearly one in five – are caused by diarrhea. It kills more children than malaria, AIDS, and measles combined.
