How is showering a waste of water when it directly goes back into the “water infrastructure”
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Used water must be filtered and processed again, and sometimes it isn’t recycled or can’t be. During that recycling process, again if there is one, water can be lost during it. That all takes time, effort, and money.
There is a limit to the *currently available* water as well. Water isn’t transported nor recycled instantly.
I’m not an expert but that’s how I understand it, until you get a better answer.
“Wasting water” is short for “Wasting clean potable water.” The fact that the water re-enters infrastructure does not make it free, because it has to be cleaned and sterilized before it can be used again. It costs money to build the sewer infrastructure in the first place, and it costs money to maintain it in working condition. It costs money to build and maintain water treatment plants, to power the machinery and replenish chemicals used while cleansing the water for re-use. It costs money to build and maintain the water mains that supply clean water to your home, and power the pumps that move water through them.
When you shower you’re using a tremendous amount of clean drinking water, which needs to be cleaned/processed again for re-use. The amount of water used can be reduced by using watersaving measures such as a watersaving showerhead, which limits the amount of water passing through, or showering for a shorter time.
Showering cold also saves heat/energy + the water wasted while waiting for the shower to heat up. Some people shower in intervals, turn on the shower for bit to get wet, turn it off to soap up and get back in to rinse.
Showering less often also helps, some people only shower once or twice per week of even per 2 weeks, and just wash themselves with a washcloth in between.
There is potable water and non-potable water. At the scale of the planet and on geological timescales unless your sending it out to space, you can’t really waste non-potable water.
Potable water takes time, money, energy to produce, so if it’s in short supply where you are using it for things other than drinking could be a waste.
If your in a desert and showering with even non-potable water which then ends up in a septic tank your could be wasting that water, as it will take a long time before it leaches out and can be used again, and being a desert even non-potable water can be in short supply.
In some places they can recycle/reclaim the water. But it costs money and energy to recycle the water. So in effect you are wasting money not water as such. Even then it’s not 100% efficient so some is lost.
In other places, the waste water just goes into rivers/sea and isn’t available to be used and is in effect lost.
Also waste refers to using water without a purpose. Having a shower has a purpose, of cleaning you. So having a shower isn’t a waste of water. Having an excessively long shower doesn’t have any real significant benefit and hence is thought to be “wasteful”.
Showering waste clean drinking water because practically everywhere it is potable water that is used.
The wastewater system usually mixes all water from the household into a single sewage drain and that will be dirty water that requires a lot of filtration to be clean. In practice, it is filtered to some degree and the rest is released out into the sea.
To get water back to the clean state you need to use lots of energy to remove the salt or to wait for it to evaporate and become rain fall down and be collected and filtered to get clean water appropriate for drinking.
So the water is not gone it no longer clean water.
Sorry, how is showering a waste of water? It uses less water than bathing and keeping ourselves clean is necessary for our health…https://takecareoftexas.org/about-us/blog/shower-vs-bath-debate#:~:text=Generally%2C%20taking%20a%20shower%20uses,to%2050%20gallons%20of%20water%20.
View water as “liquid money”.
It needs power ( your work) to get it. When the amount is limited ( like you’re poor) don’t waste it on unnecessary things. Safe it for important invests. When you’re poor, don’t buy an iphone, pay rent, electrical bills, buy food to be able to live a somewhat decent life.
If water is rare or limited, don’t fill up your pool when you’re also a farmer in a dry area who has to water his crops to have something to eat.
Yeah, the old don’t waste water becous some people in africa don’t have drinking water :).
So every city/town is build next to a water source (river/ocean/sea), the water gets treated and pumpt to your house. Used water gose to a facility that cleans and removes the waste from it and returns the water to the source.
Having 2 tipes of water (one potable/one non) would meam 2x infrastructure maintainance.
Because you’re taking clean drinkable water that had to be treated, stored, and transported to your house, and making it dirty. All those steps would have to be taken again. The water isn’t destroyed, it’s still water, but it’s dirty and it needs to be cleaned again to be safe to drink. That’s what you’re wasting.
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