There’s some simple math that can tell you how much water you’re wasting when the bathroom faucet won’t quite shut off. The numbers may surprise you: 20 drips adds up to more than three gallons a day and tops 1,100 gallons in a year.
Counting drips, tightening faucet connections and turning off the running tap while shaving or brushing your teeth are small ways to save water
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on an Earth covered with the stuff yet out of reach for some 2 billion people living globally without access to safe water for drinking and washing, according to the United Nations.
World Water Day, one of the U.N.’s campaigns for drawing attention to this vital resource, has been held on March 22 every year since 1993. It promotes education and policy as part of broader efforts to value and preserve Earth’s natural capital, promote biodiversity and counter climate change.
Read: Water is plentiful, but ways to invest are scarce — here’s how to make money
These are key issues across industries, from Coca-Cola
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pledging to replace in high-risk water areas as much water as it uses to make drinks, to the proliferation of low-flow showerheads and water-saving dishwasher cycles, to actor Matt Damon’s co-founding of water.org.
Washington State health department
No matter where you live and your own access to potable water and water for showers, flushing and lawns, think of “water efficiency” as a way to eliminate wasteful practices to help others, and save money.
The average American unknowingly wastes up to 30 gallons of water every day, according to the Washington State health department’s office of drinking water.
The Washington agency, plumbers groups, and the Environmental Protection Agency offer a few universal tricks for reducing water waste.
Buy a high-efficiency or low-flow toilet
The most important seat in the house is no doubt a major water user.
According to the EPA, installing water-conserving toilets can reduce toilet water use by 20% to 60%, which means nearly 13,000 gallons saved per year. If every old and inefficient toilet in the U.S. was updated, the savings would be around 520 billion gallons of water per year. That’s the same amount of water that flows over Niagara Falls in about 12 days.
Upgrading to a water-saving toilet could save a household on average up to $110 a year on their water bill, and $2,200 over the lifetime of that toilet.
Is there a difference between a high-efficiency and …….