2,000 gallons of water is equilvalent to taking 140 showers in one day
2,000 gallons of water weighs 8.3 tons, which is more than
a male African elephant
2,000 gallons is twice the amount of water than the rest
of the world uses
What are we using all of this water on?
Only 2.5% of all water on
Earth is freshwater
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On average, home water use only makes up for 5% of the average American's daily water footprint. What we eat and drink accounts for the majority, while energy use and transportation uses 35%. Purchasing consumer goods from clothes to computers to magazines make up the remaining 5%.
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The amount of water you use
in the morning
Brushing your teeth uses up to 4 gallons of water. Don't leave the water running
Showers use about 9 gallons of water a minute. Taking a 10 minute shower is 2 bathtubs full
One flush of the toilet uses around 3 gallons of water which is about 7.5 water bottles
In the afternoon
Making copies? It takes 3 gallons of water to produce a sheet of paper
1 t-shirt requires 713 gallons of water, most going towards irrigation of cotton fields
The average American uses 670 gallons a day for electricity, since power plants use water to cool their systems
In the evening
Washing your hands uses about 20 gallons of water. Don't leave the water running
Older top-loading machines use 40 gallons of water but today's newer standard models use 27 gallons
Water-efficient dishwashers use 4 gallons while older models use up to 13 gallons per cycle
Take a lot of gallons of water to produce
Americans use that amount in one flush of the toilet. Do you think you could survive on that little a day?
Can you cut back on your water consumption?
We live on a planet with finite resources, with one of them being clean water. Recent droughts in arid parts of North America and the world have put our problems with water into sharp focus. The more we save, the more water we leave for healthy ecosystems and a sustainable future.
Droughts across the western part of the United States have sent farmers scrambling to compete with residential and industrial water use in order to irrigate their fields. Talk of a California Dust Bowl has farmers, ecologists, and economists all worried about the far reaching effects of poor water consumption. The costs of sparse harvests get passed on to consumers in the grocery store.
The primary source of our fresh and clean water in North America is under our feet. These vast aquifers are what have allowed us to take our supply of fresh and clean water for granted, but they're not limitless. According to the USGS, the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest in the world, has declined by 50% thickness in some areas.
No one wants to get involved in a border war. In arid parts of the world, this happens over water. Water is fundamental to life–we drink it, we clean with it, we irrigate with it. A resource this precious can't become scarce without causing conflict.
When we've used up all of the freshwater reserves, we'll have no choice but to start treating non-fresh water. Options include wastewater treatment and desalinization, but both can be pricey and certainly more expensive than pumping it up from the ground. While we may have plenty of ocean water, getting it into a useable state is neither easy or cheap.
