Help preserve our most precious resource

Water conservationists, future generations, and the current population need us to be aware of how much clean drinking water we might be overusing.

I say “overusing” rather than “wasting” because you might be thinking something like, “If I’m actually using the water, how can I be wasting it?”

But the truth is, a lot of us, including myself, do overuse water when we don’t know how much goes down the drain.

I’ve heard things like, “The water is free,” but unfortunately, this isn’t true for multiple reasons. Here is one of the wide-reaching ones: it’s not free to the planet or to the living creatures on it.

According to UNICEF, 703 million people — 1 in 11 people worldwide — lack access to clean water. This is alarming, partly due to the rapid annual decline of natural freshwater resources.

And although you may be asking, “What about when it rains?” unfortunately, this doesn’t mean we have more drinking water. We lose massive amounts of rainwater to evaporation, pollution, and runoff that doesn’t make it into reservoirs.

On top of that, CalMatters reported in 2024 that 735,000 Californians still lack access to safe drinking water due to groundwater contamination and failing water systems.

Then there are other issues like drought, climate change, evaporation, mass farming, water privatization worldwide, and a rising population consuming more and more of our depleting water.

In 2014, each American used an average of 82 gallons of water at home every day, according to the United States Geological Survey.

So what can we do to become more water-wise in our day-to-day routines?

The EPA suggests these tips for saving our most precious resource:

When brushing your teeth, turn off the faucet, and you could save eight gallons of water per day.

While shaving or just lathering up in the shower, turn the water off and turn it back on to rinse yourself. This could save more than 10 gallons each day.

If you have a garden, you can save water by using gray water, laundry rinse water collected in a bucket via the washer drain hose and voilà!

Assuming you brush your teeth twice a day and shave five times per week, these tips could save you nearly 5700 gallons each year.

And that’s just one person. Imagine a room with six people; that’s 34,200 gallons of water saved.

I understand that in such close quarters, multiple showers a day are a must, but by using them wisely, we could help guarantee that our children and grandchildren have clean water in the here and now and in the future to come.

Help our glorious Mother Earth and her inhabitants by combining some of the water-saving tips to protect this precious life-giving resource.

We can survive without a lot of things, but water is not one of them. An article from USGS called Water in the Human Body lists reasons why water is so important:

That’s just what it does for our bodies. Imagine what it does for the planet as a whole. I don’t know about you, but I’m changing my water habits today.