The need to save water may seem counter-intuitive at first glance. It rains all the time, the earth is covered in water, there is water all over the place! Why is conserving water SO important for our future?
Let me break it down for you. Ninety-seven percent of the water on Earth is salty, leaving just 3% that is freshwater. On top of that, 2.5% is unavailable for human use–it’s either polluted, trapped in glaciers, or is too far beneath the Earth’s surface for us to extract. This leaves around 0.5% available for use. That’s pretty crazy, right?
Out of that 0.5%, agriculture alone uses up 70% of the freshwater supply globally. This means the water used to grow cotton for the fashion industry, the water used to grow grains for the meat/dairy industry, and the water used for the fruits and veggies that are on your dinner table tonight.
Why can’t we start using ocean water?
While we could technically desalinate ocean water for our use, it is an extremely expensive process. While possible for rich countries or corporations to use desalination for some of their water consumption, it’s not sustainable on a global scale. It takes an incredible amount of energy to run a desalination plant. Besides the cost, there are many other issues with desalination, such as how the leftover salt concentrate is handled. Dumping it back into the ocean can harm aquatic life. When water is pulled out of the oceans, tiny ocean animals die from getting pulled into these desalination plants. This disrupts the ocean ecosystem as a whole, which can cause additional problems in our seas.
Why is saving water more important than ever?
Climate change means that more extreme weather is happening around the world. Droughts, hurricanes, extreme rainfall, rising temperatures, melting glaciers–all of these have an effect on the water supply. The changes in the water supply are currently felt most by the most vulnerable communities around the world.
With population rates exploding around the globe, the demand for clean, fresh water is higher than ever. And we can’t match the supply with the demand. There’s not enough freshwater to go around. The UN estimates that by 2025, 2/3 of the world will likely live in areas affected by water scarcity.
“The water table is dropping all over the world. There’s not an infinite supply of water.”
Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA
Many people (myself included) take fresh water for granted. It comes out of the tap when I turn it on. I flush my toilet. I have water to water my plants. However, we need to be more conscious of how much water we are using in our daily life. We need to save water. The average American family uses 88 gallons a day at home. To put that into perspective, households in Cochran, Texas who have no clean water access and have to truck their water in, only use 50-100 gallons of water per month. Yes, you read that right!
Water conservation is one of the most pressing issues we are facing globally.
Using the water we currently have access to, carefully and mindfully, can make a big difference. With population rising around the world, we have to start thinking outside the box on how we can save water in our homes and in our communities. Freshwater is not an unlimited resource, and we have to do our best to conserve and protect this sacred source of life.
