Understanding the Importance of Water Conservation
What Is Water Conservation?
Water conservation is a series of methods aimed at reducing our use of freshwater resources. Water conservation methods range from conservation methods like water monitoring and conservation-friendly building codes instituted by the government, to strategies for everyday people to reduce home water use.
Why Is Water Conservation Important?
Proper water management is important for a number of reasons. Some of those reasons include:
Water is a resource. The current water supply on Earth comes from surface water runoff, groundwater, and snow. This supply comes from the same sources that have been used for thousands of years, which is threatened by overdevelopment, pollution, and global warming. Only three percent of the Earth’s water supply is made up of freshwater, with only half a percent of that available for human consumption. Saltwater from the ocean cannot be consumed unless it is desalinated, which is a costly process involving a great deal of energy consumption.
Conservation alleviates droughts. Dry areas like deserts experience drought regularly, in which the rainfall and snowfall aren’t adequate and cause a water shortage. Conserving water can help alleviate the effects of water shortages in any given community.
Water use drains other resources. Using in-house water resources requires energy to deliver the water to your home. This energy-use increases when you use hot water since a lot of energy goes into heating. Reducing the amount of hot and cold water you use can help conserve both water and energy, cutting down on energy pollution which harms the environment.
7 Ways to Conserve Water at Home
There are many ways people can reduce their use of water. Read on for some ways to lower your everyday water consumption.
Update your appliances. Many old appliances use significantly more water than modern water-efficient and water-saving ones. Research the toilets, faucets, showerheads, dishwashers, and clothes washers in your home to determine how much water they use, and look into options that use less water, like dual-flush toilets or low-flow showerheads.
2. Take shorter showers. For every minute in the shower, your showerhead can use up to ten gallons of water. Try reducing the amount of time you spend in the shower every day, to a maximum of five minutes, or turn off the water in between rinses to conserve water while you’re bathing.
Use the dishwasher, if possible. It may seem counterintuitive, but washing dishes by hand typically uses more water than the dishwasher. If you don’t have a dishwater, there are ways to conserve water during the washing process. Simply turn off the water when you wash dishes, instead of letting it run.
Skip the garbage disposal. Garbage disposal units use up a lot of water. Instead of sending chunks of food down the drain, toss them into a compost pile to save water and reduce food waste.
Turn off the water when brushing your teeth. Letting the faucet run when you brush your teeth is an unnecessary waste of water. Conserve water by turning the faucet off when brushing.
Store drinking water in the fridge. For people who drink tap water out of the faucet, running the water until it gets cold is a natural habit—but it wastes a lot of water in the process. Rather than drinking cold water straight from the faucet, fill reusable bottles or pitchers up with lukewarm sink water and store them in the fridge, which allows them to get cold without running water down the drain.
Check for leaky faucets. Leaky faucets can waste up to 20 gallons of water every day. If you know you have a faucet that drips, fix it, or replace it as soon as possible to save water (and your utility budget). Even if you don’t think your faucets are leaking, check periodically to make sure. To detect a leak, check your water meter over two hours when water is not in use at your home. If the water usage changes, you have a leak. Making sure your water systems are efficient will help avoid wasting water.
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