“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” - Jacques Cousteau
Although water accounts for 70% of the Earth surface, only about 1% is can consumed by humans,the rest being saline. Today, the freshwater supply is practically non-existent with large portions of the world suffering from inadequate access to a potable water supply and having to revert to water sources contaminated with disease vectors and pathogens. The current water crisis is a WORLD issue. Nearly one billion people – about one in eight – lack access to clean water. This lack of water is closely related to poverty meaning some the poorest nations in the world are dealing with the biggest scarcity. Here are some facts to consider:
Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day
More than 660 million people without sanitation live on less than $2 a day, and more than 385 million on less than $1 a day.
Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
More than 3.5 million people die each year from water-related disease; 84 percent are children. Nearly all deaths, 98 percent, occur in the developing world.
Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every four hours.
Lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection.
Millions of women and children spend several hours each day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources.
"400 million children (1 in 5 from the developing world) have no access to safe water. 1.4 million children will die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation" (State of the World’s Children, 2005, UNICEF)
A big contributor to the water crisis, studies show, is the commodization of water. With water being seeing as a commodity rather than a fundamental right, supply is controlled by multinational corporations; meaning the poor are the most affected seeing as the top priority is to maximize profits. The poor are left helpless as they can no longer afford the commodity.
In most developed countries, such as the U.S., we take access to clean water for granted. “A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.” (Maude Barlow, Water as Commodity—The Wrong Prescription, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Summer 2001, Vol. 7, No. 3). This misuse of water is evident in everyday life, all you have to do is look around. Think about how much water is used just to water a lawn (with 50-70% of our residential water used for landscaping, that's about 10,000 gallons of water per summer per 1,000 square foot lawn!); how much water is used to flush a toilet (typically 6 gallons!); how much water is used when brushing your teeth with the faucet running (around 2 gallons!). The numbers are astounding, right? Luckily there's a lot water to be conserved simply by being more conscious about water usage. Here are some changes that can be made to do your part:
In the bathroom:
To significantly reduce water use, replace your old 5 gallon per flush toilet with a new 1.5 or 1.6 gallon per flush toilet.
This may be a costly so an alternative solution is to retrofit your old one with a water-saving device such as sealed container filled with sand.
If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.
Take shorter showers. A shower head that uses 5 gallons per minute meaning a shower longer than 8 minutes uses more than 40 gallons of water.
Turn the water off when soaping up or shaving.
Keep a basin in the shower to catch water while it's heating up. This excess water can be used to flush the toilet or water the garden.
Use basin to wash hands and shave.
Turn off water when brushing teeth.
In the kitchen:
Wash dishes in a basin rather than letting the water run. This saves on dish soap as well.
In the laundry room:
Front-loading washing machines use 40% less water than top loaders.
Wash only full loads
So far we've been following all of the suggestions above, with the exception of switching to more efficient appliances obviously due to financial reasons, and they've pretty easy to incorporate. Although, ill admit that I wasn't the most water efficient when it came down to showers so a shower timer has been really handy. I've been cutting back showers by A LOT, I used to take 15 minute showers but i've been cutting that down by 5 minutes for now but eventually in half. It's actually not too bad, just can't stand and enjoy the warm water for as long as I used to but the compromise is well worth it.
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