Why is conserving household water usage important? Doesn’t all the water end up at a treatment plant and go back into the supply at some point? Is water actually being depleted with things like long showers? Where does it go?
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Most places don’t recycle water. Fresh water comes down in the rain, and it gets into rivers, and then the water is taken from the rivers, purified a bit and you drink that. When you pee and poop, the sewerage is treated a bit to make it less nasty, then discharged somewhere that isn’t where you drink – into the ocean or downstream on the river – hopefully not upstream of another town. (Actually, because of this problem it’s more common to get water from aquifers, where the river water percolates through the ground for a while which filters it)
The dirty water ends up in the ocean where the sun evaporates it, and only the water evaporates and rains and so that’s how it gets fully purified.
We can’t really control where the rain goes – your town gets a set amount of it, and that’s that – if you use more water than it rains, you run out. You’re conserving rain.
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