The pressure facing Summertime Homebuyers and the importance of water conservation is serious business and nothing to laugh about. The topics are serious, but the facts, figures and statistics listed in this article of our water usage and consumption should open your eyes in amazement. It will have you scratching your head in disbelief and leave you wondering as to why anyone in their right mind would spend time calculating answers to questions that no one in their right mind would ever ask.
-
- Less than 2% of the Earth’s water supply is fresh water
- Of all the earth’s water, 97% is salt water found in oceans and seas
- Only 1% of the earth’s water is available for drinking water and 2% percent is frozen
- The human body is about 75% water
- A person can survive about a month without food, but only 5 to 7 days without water
- Every day in the United States, we drink about 110 million gallons of water
- Landscaping accounts for about half the water Californians use at home. Showers account for another 18 percent, while toilets use about 20 percent
- Showering and bathing are the largest indoor uses (27%) of water domestically
- The average American uses 140-170 gallons of water per day
- If every household in America had a faucet that dripped once each second, 928 million gallons of water a day would leak away
-
- There are 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot of water. Therefore, 2000 cubic feet of water is 14,960 gallons
- An acre foot of water is about 326,000 gallons. One-half acre foot is enough to meet the needs of a typical family for a year.
- It takes 3.3 acre feet of water to grow enough food for an average family for a year
- A leaky faucet can waste 100 gallons a day
- One flush of the toilet uses 6 ½ gallons of water
- An average bath requires 37 gallons of water
- An average family of 4 uses 881 gallons of water per week just by flushing the toilet
- An average 5 minute shower uses 15-25 gallons of water and about 40 gallons are used in 10 minutes
- A full bathtub requires about 36 gallons of water
- You use about 5 gallons of water if you leave the water running while brushing your teeth
- Each person needs to drink about 2 ½quarts or 80 ounces of water every day
- An automatic dishwasher uses 9 to 12 gallons of water while hand washing dishes can use up to 20 gallons
- Public water suppliers process 38 billion gallons of water per day for domestic and public use
- Approximately 1 million miles of pipelines and aqueducts carry water in the U.S. & Canada. That’s enough pipe to circle the earth 40 times
- About 800,000 water wells are drilled each year in the United States for domestic, farming, commercial, and water testing purposes
- More than 13 million households get their water from private wells and are responsible for treating and pumping the water themselves
- You can refill an 8-oz glass of water approximately 15,000 times for the same cost as a six-pack of soda pop
- A dairy cow must drink 4 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of milk
- 300 million gallons of water are needed to produce a single day’s supply of U.S. newsprint
- 1” of rainfall drops 7,000 gallons or nearly 30 tons of water on a 60′ by 180′ piece of land
- It takes an average of 45 gallons of water for a commercial car wash, but it takes between 80-140 gallons of water to wash your car at home
