We often hear that we dont have much water to drink or use because it’s a rare resource and we need to protect it but if we use it, doesn’t the water come through some ways back to nature? It can’t be just “vanished” right? Therefore can’t be the water just be reused forever?
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The total amount of water stays pretty much the same, but USABLE, CLEAN water does not. It takes time for nature to create fresh water, and it takes time/money/effort for us to create drinkable water from non-drinkable water. Turning salt water or wastewater into fresh water isn’t easy.
Natural bodies of water only have so much water in them. if we take the water faster than it can replenish, these natural sources will deplete over time.
so if we use up more fresh, clean, drinkable water, it will require more time/money/effort to replace it, causing fresh water to become more scarce and more expensive.
Water does go back to the earth but not as clean as it started. Most water has been contaminated with herbicide/ pesticides run off, industrial waste and/ or pharmaceutical drugs. Not to mention micro plastics, heavy metals, detergents, etc.
Fresh and clean drinking water is a limited resource, in many places there is simply too much pollution. So while it can be “reused” it would require a lot of remediation to create the same quality water it originally was.
Yes, water “comes back to nature”. The problem is that water doesn’t always come back to where you got it from. Your water may come from an underground lake, or an above ground reservoir, maybe a river. But that water that you ran down the drain might not end up back where you gotnit from. It might rain down somewhere else. That’s why some places are rain forests, and some are deserts.
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