I’m very insecure with my water usage. Is it possible to “waste” water?
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You should move to the country, if this bothers you. When you live in a rural area, it’s extremely common to get your water from a private well, and have your drains & sewage treated by an on-site septic system. Your water gets sourced from the well, and the septic system eventually returns it to the water table (after the bacteria in the septic tank treat it). That’s a very efficient system. Nearly 100% of that water is recycled.
Of course, municipal wastewater treatment plants clean up the “used” water in essentially the same way as a private septic, and also quite efficiently. They just do it at a greater scale. However they are sometimes open-air in design, and do have some evaporative losses, and the treated water is normally released into waterways (not directly re-infiltrated back into the ground).
On the supply-side of the water question, cities may source their water from wells, rivers, lakes, etc., and efficiency varies due to the wide range of pre-use purification and processing such water may require.
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