Quick question: how many gallons of water do YOU use per day? 20 gallons seems about right, right? WRONG! Statistics from Food Democracy’s website states the average person uses about 80-100 gallons of water every day! Big numbers, huh? And what is even more interesting than that is the average person wastes 20-30 gallons of his/her daily use.
Yes, even I will admit I, like many others, do waste water. So here is a helpful hint that can lead to less water usage; turn off your faucet while brushing your teeth. It may not seem like a waste of water; but in reality it is! One who turns off his/her water faucet while brushing his/her teeth saves at least one gallon compared to a person who does not turn off the faucet. “So what? What’s another gallon?” you could ask. Actually, if you think about it, if every student here at UT (6,000 of us) ran their water while brushing their teeth a total of 6,000 gallons of water would be wasted every day.
It is the same situation as showering. Typically before you shower you turn it on and let the water warm up-this usually takes 2-5 minutes at the least? Within those 2-5 minutes you have already wasted 25 gallons of water. And of course we’ve all had those early mornings that we just love to stand in the shower, waking up or procrastinating to go to our 8am classes. All of those extra minutes accumulate into wasted water. As crazy as it seems a ten minute shower uses 50-100 gallons of water. These numbers are real, wasting gallons of water every day is real, which is why droughts and famine are real situations throughout the world.
Reality check: You do not have to spend hours planting trees or garbage picking from the Hillsborough River to consider yourself to be “environmentally friendly”; rather you can conserve your daily use of water by spending less time in the shower or even brushing your teeth. By conserving your supply of water you can have a global and local impact. Who would have thought turning off the faucet water while brushing your teeth can dramatically impact you and people overseas!
Droughts throughout the United States can be prevented if we all used a little less water here and there. Newsweek articles concludes about half of America is now affected by water shortages and droughts. So what’s the big deal? Droughts do not affect you at UT right? Surprisingly, droughts do affect us students here at UT through a trickle down process. Because of droughts, low rivers and distressed farmers search for new sources of water out West, farmers can not produce stable amounts of crops to supply throughout the United States. As a result of fewer crops, America’s economy is weakened, and our food supply starts to deteriorate. Of course, our food supply is not going to slip between our fingers now; but, for future generations in America, it may be a different story. This situation is already happening throughout the world. Mostly India and China are experiencing stress due to water shortages creating food shortages. Both these countries experienced droughts, which over the past 300 years, last year’s droughts were the worst of all. These two countries lack access to safe drinking water and even irrigation systems to water their crops; leaving their people thirsty and hungry. Due to farmers in these countries not providing a stable production, some are forced to exchange their farming lives, countryside and fields for the industrial cities in order to financially provide for their families.
Perhaps if you were informed conserving water can actually save you and our country lots of dollars, then would you consider turning off your faucet while brushing your teeth? You can continue to waste water and literally pay the bill with pocket cash or you can spend that money on something else like a new little black dress or a night out with friends. Either way, we all know you’d rather spend your money on anything but a water bill. So take shorter waters and buy something nice for yourself! Oh yeah, one more thing: water is soon to be the new oil. Private companies are already and going to be competing against each other and will be drilling throughout the country. We all know gas prices have sky rocketed and it now looks as if the next thing to cost a pretty penny is a gallon of water.
So if you just skimmed this entire letter and read the last paragraph I hope you get a few things out of this letter. You really do save money by conserving your daily amount of water. Seriously, how hard can it be? It’s so simple you’d be stupid not to do it. By conserving your daily water amounts, you can help prevent drought, famine and the price of water. Locally or globally, you can help the people, why wouldn’t you want to do that?
Here’s to the future,
Samanatha Spalholz