The Importance Of Water Conservation And Our Planet s Health

Imagine waking up one morning and realizing that you have no access to water. You can’t shower, you can’t brush your teeth, and you can’t hydrate yourself as much as you want too anymore. Water isn’t something that we consider a luxurious product. Our lungs are made up of 90% water, our brains are made up of 70% water, and our blood is made up of more than 80% water. An average family of four uses 146,000 gallons of water per year. Put into simplest terms, we need water to function, and to stay healthy. While society knows that water is a limited resource, they are not acting responsibly to conserve water and our planet’s water reserves is decreasing at an alarming rate. Conserving water is beneficial to all living things because it’s†¦show more content†¦Quoted by the United Nations in a report regarding the mismanagement of resources, one fifth of the world’s population lacks safe drinking water. Yet here we have farmers a nd their wasteful irrigation systems contributing to water scarcity in this country. Did you know that 950 gallons of water are needed to produce just 2 pounds of boneless beef? Let’s consider water waste in industry. Industrial water waste is water that is used in the production, or process of goods and energy. In 2005, US industries wasted an estimated 18,200 million gallons of water per day. The state of Louisiana uses the most water for industrial purposes, 2,700 million gallons of water per day. The states of Louisiana, Indiana, and Texas account for 38% of the nation’s industrial water withdrawals. According to the United States Department of Energy, Texas alone accounts for 71% of salt water withdrawals for their industries. How about water waste in your homes, hotels, and office buildings? Assuming that every other day you take a 15 minute shower, you waste 19,000 gallons of water a year. If you flush a toilet fifteen times a day you’re wasting 33 gallons of water per year. We often like to leave the faucet running when we brush our teeth, or when we wash our face, or hands. It seems to most people, be too much of a hassle to just turn off the water in the shower while they are shampooing their hair. Every drop of water that is wasted