FAQs

Q: How can I conserve water in my dorm, apartment, or home?
http://ucsd.edu/conservewater/faq/index.html
There are many ways to conserve water around the household using easy simple methods. By turning off the water while brushing your teeth, you can save three gallons of water per day. Shortening your shower by a few minutes could save five gallons a day. Washing your clothes when you only have a full load can save 15 to 50 gallons of water per load. Getting your car washed at a car wash instead of washing it yourself could save 100 gallons per wash. These are just a few simple ways to conserve water, just watching how much unnecessary amounts of water you use each day could save hundreds of gallons of water per day.

Q: Why don’t we just stop watering?
http://ucsd.edu/conservewater/faq/index.html
While stop watering our plants and landscape may seem like the best solution to conserving water not all of its results are beneficial. The landscape that we do have slows down the runoff of water. During this process pollutants are removed naturally from the water before it reaches the oceans. Removing watering all together could cause soil erosion and pollution. Instead you can plant new drought-tolerant and low-water-use plantings which require less watering than normal plants.

Q: Can we replace all fixtures with low-flow versions?
http://ucsd.edu/conservewater/faq/index.html
Low flow-fixtures are now mandatory to be installed. The National Energy Policy Act, as early as 1995, authorized the use of toilets that use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush.[1] These low-flow fixtures include toilets, faucet aerators, and showerheads. Low flow toilets use about 1.6 gallons of water while conventional toilets use 3.5 gallons per flush. Low-flow shower heads only use about 2.5 gallons of water per minute while regular shower heads use 4 to 5 gallons of water. Lastly low-flow faucet aerators use 2.5 gallons per minute compared to 4 gallons per minute.[2] They are simple to install and don’t cost too much. This simple change could save thousands of gallons of water per household.

Q: What is rainwater harvesting?
Rainwater harvesting is the collecting of rain water from rooftops for drinking water, landscape irrigation, and watering livestock. Methods such as rain barrels are simple and easy to install. Most cost within $50-$200 and can hold around 60 gallons of water per barrel.[3] Some ground catchment systems take the collected water and store is underground to be filtered for regular use like water out of the faucet. The advantages of rainwater harvesting, are the amounts of water and money that you will save. Instead of wasting large amounts of water that comes from the tap, we can use the water that comes straight from rainfalls and use it safely that ways.

Q: Does everyone have access to sanitary water?
No. Around 1.1 billion people globally do not have access to sanitary water and 2.4 billion people do not even have sanitation facilities.[4] Millions of people, especially children, die of a waterborne illness each day because of lack of water sanitation. Many of these people are forced to drink dirty infested water to even stay alive. Most lack common hygiene because they have little access to water so they skip out on bathing themselves and their children. By providing sanitation facilities in these developing countries we can lower the water-related deaths by one third.[5] Education about sanitation would higher hygiene within the people of these countries and disease rates would lower.

Q: How much water does a person use each day?
http://www.lenntech.com/water-quantity-faq.htm American use about 168 liters of water per day. Surprisingly most of this water is used while flushing the toilet. About 29% of our daily water use is due to flushing the toilet. Second in line is using the washing machine with about 21% of our daily usage of water.[6] We use unnecessary amounts of water throughout the day. By simply conserving a little water each day we could give this water to the countries that are in need of it most and have little access to the fresh water that we do. We take the water that we have for granted. We simply turn on the tap and endless amounts of water poor out. Unfortunately, this water is not endless and we will run out eventually. We should start conserving now before it may be too late.

Q: How much water is there on earth?
http://www.lenntech.com/water-quantity-faq.htm
There is more than half the amount of water on earth than there is land. About 70% of the earth is covered in water. These facts may draw people to believe that we will have an endless amount of drinking water, yet this accusation is false. Of all the water we have on this planet only 2.59% of it is fresh water and an even lower percent of less than 1% of this water can be used as drinking water.[7] There are systems being tried such as desalination which filters water straight from the ocean into drinking water. Although this sounds like a breakthrough system, it has its flaws. It takes a great amount of energy to complete this task and in the process it releases harmful greenhouse gases. This is not a price we want to take for fresh water.

Q: How is drinking water purified?
http://www.lenntech.com/applications/drinking/faq/drinking-water-faq.htm
Water is usually stored in a reservoir for several days before the water is moved to a purification plant. While sitting in the reservoir, oxygen from the air settles into the water improving the taste of the water. Water can be filtered in many different ways such as activated carbon filters, Ion exchange units, reverse osmosis units, and distillation units. The most common way to filter water is through activated charcoal. When the charcoal is heated it becomes “activated” and absorbs any impurities in the water.[8] Today we can buy household units to filter our own water. By doing this we can also save water and prevent dirt and disease from entering our body.

Q: How does water and sanitation affect women?
Women make up more than half of Africa’s population. Because women are the care takers of their children they are forced to find water in any condition to help their children survive. This may even mean walking hundreds of miles to the closest body of water, which in most cases is usually extremely contaminated and full of water-borne disease. The women often don’t even have enough water to bath their own children, therefore their hygiene is lacking. Many of these children die either from not bathing or drinking the unsanitary water. The women use this water for everything from drinking, bathing, cleaning, and even cooking. The African Union Summit is helping in this area by providing these women with sanitary facilities with drinkable water.[9]

Q: Is the climate change causing water to become scarce?
The temperature is increasingly getting higher; therefore glaciers are melting causing snow-based water to lower in availability.[10] The hotter temperature also leads to less rain falls and droughts causing the water supply to be very scarce. If there is not enough water for the people than there will not be enough water for the agriculture and it will cause famine and lack of water can lead to war. This domino effect is occurring now and climate change has a big thing to do with it. Things are being done both about the climate change and the water crisis. People are now working together to ensure that our planet will safe for millions of years to come.
[1] http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-Inventory/Plumbing/low-flow-plumbing-fixtures
[2] http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-Inventory/Plumbing/low-flow-plumbing-fixtures
[3] http://frugalliving.about.com/od/energyandutilities/p/Rain_Barrels.htm
[4] http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/en/
[5] http://water.org/learn-about-the-water-crisis/facts/?gclid=CO2s_6Gp46ECFcRM5Qodiz5xJw#sanitation
[6] http://www.lenntech.com/water-usage-faq.htm
[7] http://www.lenntech.com/water-quantity-faq.htm
[8] http://www.howitworks.net/how-water-filters-work.html
[9] http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/48637
[10] http://solveclimate.com/blog/20091021/dangers-climate-change-lack-water-can-lead-war