Like when ppl say don’t wash your yard or car with a hose. Isn’t the extra water or for that matter all water either seeping underground and adding to groundwater table or being evaporated into nature to be recycled? In both cases the water will be filtered enough to be potable….
In: Physics
when i was 6 or so, I opened all the faucets in the house. Dad was wondering what I was doing. I said I wanted fish to get clean water.
Water waste is a very local issue. In some areas you could pretty much use as much as you want with little long-term impact. Chicago draws water from miles out in Lake Michigan and it’s clean enough out there that it doesn’t take too much processing to make it potable. Lake Michigan isn’t going to be running dry anytime soon no matter how much you water a lawn in Chicago. If you draw your water from a private well in an area with a sparse population, a healthy aquifer, and good rainfall, all you need to worry about is drawing the aquifer down below your well pump (growing up in WV, I’ve had the well run dry mid-shower and that’s no fun). If however you live in a heavily populated metropolis in a desert region surrounded by agriculture supported with artificial irrigation, such as much of the western US, they have pumped so much water out of the ground that the ground level is literally falling (like sleeping in a leaking waterbed) and they have to keep drilling the wells deeper and deeper. And they have stolen so much water from the Colorado River that it doesn’t reach the ocean anymore. No matter where you are though, it takes energy to collect, purify, and distribute that water. Saving that energy is a good reason in itself.
“Like when people don’t wash their hands…” Hahahahaha, not even.
Homie, if you take all “urban” use of water (which includes industrial applications as well as residential use) that combined is 10% of our total water use. 50% is qualified as environmental, which is just water being used to maintain waterways. 40% is agricultural. These numbers are for California, by the way.
Hell it’s estimated that 30% of all water waste is stuff like *leaks.*
You and your use of water is literally irrelevant to the broader water use discussion. Remember that every time they tell you to reduce. You could be raptured tomorrow and it would not affect the result.
It’s more of an issue of WHERE the water is and therefore how convenient/easy it is to get.
In the unlimited water cycle, there is a limited rate at which rain can refill reservoires.
If you use more than that ratio, the reservoires will deplete.
So there’s definitely reason in saving water.
It’s like living on a salary. You get paid once, every month. If you spend more than you get paid every month, you’re in debt. Except nature doesn’t give loans. If the water supply is empty, you have to wait for rain.
If you launched it into space. Any material we launch off into space—steel, aluminum, water—will never return to this planet again with no option to be recycled or repurposed or even contributing to the collective mass of the earth. Just gone. Forever.
I get what you’re saying but the one that always gets me is water shortage. Conserve we are running out of water this many days before we run out of water, etc. when all the water we use for bathing, washing, flushing, watering, drinking all of it is recycled water and has been for a very long time. Recycled with hard chemicals and “cleansing processes”
Now, knowing what sorts of chemicals are seeded into clouds for climate control and then that water goes into our earth to save us from “running out of water” but literally its poisoning our marine life and the entire ecosystem and us, now i kinda don’t want to waste the water.
Moving water from somewhere you can drink it – like a reservoir – and using a hose to flush it down the drain to somewhere you can’t drink it – like the ocean – is what wastes it. Sure, there same amount of water exists. But that’s poor solace to a thirsty man with an empty reservoir.
Here in Belgium, the northern industrious and most populated part of the country has put so much concrete everywhere that rain water doesn’t flow into the ground mostly and doesn’t reach groundwater tables.
The water goes into sewers, draining pipes and then rivers.
It’s been raining here for SEVEN CONTINUOUS MONTHS and they still fear drought in summer.
It is wasted
You’re not wasting the water itself (as in it being ruined forever or destroyed), but the effort that went into getting that water and/or the opportunity to use the water for something else.
* Money, effort, and other resources are used to get the water there. Your utility payments, workers’ hours, and equipment/property/fuel/electricity were all used to get the water there. Now that it’s down the drain, to get the same (amount of) water back, a similar amount of money, effort, and other resources have to be spent on the replacement water.
* A gallon that simply goes down the drain is a gallon that hasn’t been used for cooking, cleaning, watering plants, etc.
* If you’re in a drought or otherwise limited in capacity, it can harm other efforts (firefighting, etc.).
Latest Answers