TheGoGreenBlog.com

While humans can go for over a month without food, if you deprive us of water, we’re dead within a few days. Yet we still take it for granted.

Here are a few fast facts about water on our planet and how we consume it.

• Almost 70 per cent of all fresh water is used for agriculture.
• Over pumping of groundwater exceeds natural replenishment rates by at least 160 billion cubic metres a year.
• 1,000 to 3,000 liters of water is needed to produced just one kilo of rice.
• A corn field of one acre gives off 4,000 gallons of water per day in evaporation.
• The production of one pound of beef requires over 2000 gallons of water.
• Around 75 percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water, but only 3% of that is fresh water.
• Over 90% of the world’s fresh water supplies are located in Antarctica.
• Around 6,800 gallons of water is needed to grow a day’s worth of food for a family of four.
• Freshwater animals are becoming extinct five times faster than land animals.
• If one-thousandth (or more) of the weight of water is salt, the water is considered “saline.”
• A gallon of gas can contaminate 750,000 gallons of water.
• Most of the world’s population must walk at least 3 hours to fetch water.

Check out your water heater’s temperature setting and lower it to 120°F. Water heaters are extremely inefficient, and the higher the temperature setting, the more energy they waste.

Water heaters typically account for about 13% of a household’s utility expenses. If you lower your water heater setting from 150°F to 120°F, you could reduce its energy demand by up to 15%.

Bottle water maybe convenient but it is at no way eco-friendly. Here are my top 5 reasons to ditch bottled water:

1- Disposable plastic water bottles are not meant for multiple uses. Hence the word “disposable”. The #1 polyethylene terephthalate, or PET is fine for a single use, but reuse can lead to chemical leaching of toxins such as DEHA, a known carcinogen, and benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), a potential hormone disrupter.

2- Making plastic bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, which is enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year (NY Times).

3- Buying bottled water is expensive. To drink the recommended daily amount of water using bottled water can cost an average of $1,400 per year, and to drink the same amount from the tap costs around $0.49 for the year (NY Times).

4- Tap water is fine to drink. 90% of tap water in the U.S. meets or exceeds EPA standards for drinking water.

5- At least 40% of bottled water is tap water anyways. That’s right…you’re paying big bucks on water that you could have just gotten from your kitchen tap.

The average person uses 23.3 gallons of water per day when showering. If you shorten your showers, just by a minute or two, you can save up to 700 gallons of water per month. That’s a lot of water!

Keep a pitcher of drinking water in the refrigerator instead of running the tap water to cool it for drinking. This has the potential to save 200 to 300 gallons of water per month.

Are you shopping for a new washing machine? Consider buying the front-loading style. Front-loading washing machines use 40 percent less water, 50 percent less energy, and less detergent than the traditional top-loading washing machines. Plus they spin more water out of the laundry, which means drying time is cut and in turn even less energy is used. So, greenify your wash by buying and using a front-loading washing machine instead of the traditional top-loading machines.

When defrosting frozen foods, either plan ahead by placing frozen items in the refrigerator overnight or defrost them in the microwave rather then running them under warm water. By doing this, you have the potential to save 50 to 150 gallons of water per month.

Greenify your family’s dinner by planning ahead!

With summer right around the corner, lots of people like to enjoy the warm weather by going out on a boat. This can be great fun, but you need to protect the waters. One way is to use a funnel when refueling your water vehicles. This will help to avoid spills.

When it comes to watering your gardens, flowers or veggies, the eco-gardener choses to use a drip hose over a traditional sprinkler.

Drip hoses work by allowing water to slowly seep out of small holes that target the roots of the plants, where they actually need the water, as opposed to the leaves, flowers, sidewalk, and all passing cars on the street.

Make that green thumb a bit greener this year by using a drip hose to irrigate your gardens instead of those water wasting sprinklers.

A simple way to go green now is by turning off the water while you’re brushing your teeth or shaving.

On average people brush their teeth for 2 minutes twice a day. If you leave the water running during this time you are wasting about 3 gallons in 2 minutes. By turning off the water you can help save an average of 6 gallons per day. That’s 2,184 gallons of water a year!