I don’t understand how you can just leave the tap on–where does that water come from?
Is the water from your kitchen sink and your toilet the same water?
Is water really being “wasted”?
In: Engineering
There are two possible choices. If you have a well, then it comes from the aquifer under your house, and you live out in the country in an non-desert place. If you are like 90+% of people it comes from a water treatment plant.
The water plant takes water from a river, or underground, and purifies it so that it’s safe to drink.
Yes, there is only one water supply pipe to most homes, though some communities have special “outdoor water” that’s not clean enough to drink that’s used outside to water the plants. The water you flush the toilet with is drinkable water.
All the water that goes into drains goes to a wastewater treatment plant where it’s cleaned up and usually put into a river (unless you’re in that community with “outside water”).
Water is wasted all the time. Because the price of drinking water is so small, between 0.4 and 0.8 cents per gallon, there is little financial incentive to conserve it. That’s also why “solutions” like desalination aren’t really feasible, water has to be almost free for people to be happy.
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