#WaterConservation #RecyclingWater #SaveOurPlanet
Hey there, curious minds! ππ§ Have you ever wondered why we’re constantly told to save water, even though it’s supposed to be recycled in nature? Let’s break it down for you!
The Water Cycle
Water on Earth goes through a continuous cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, known as the water cycle. This means that the same water molecules are being reused over and over again. π¦ However, not all water is readily accessible for human use.
Limited Freshwater Resources
While the Earth’s surface is covered in water, only a small percentage of it is fresh water that we can drink. Most of this fresh water is locked up in glaciers or underground aquifers, making it inaccessible for regular use. ποΈ This limited availability of fresh water is why we need to conserve the water that we do have.
Water Scarcity
Many regions around the world are already facing water scarcity issues due to a combination of factors like overpopulation, pollution, and climate change. π Conserving water helps ensure that there’s enough clean water available for everyone, both now and in the future.
Environmental Impact
Conserving water isn’t just about ensuring a clean water supply for humans. It also helps protect ecosystems and wildlife that depend on water sources for survival. π By reducing water waste, we can preserve the delicate balance of nature and prevent further damage to the environment.
Everyday Actions
So, what can you do to help conserve water in your daily life? Here are some simple tips to get you started:
– Fix any leaks in your home to prevent water wastage.
– Take shorter showers and turn off the tap while brushing your teeth.
– Water your plants early in the morning or late in the evening to reduce evaporation.
By making small changes to your daily routine, you can contribute to the bigger goal of water conservation and help protect our precious planet. πΏπ§
In conclusion, even though water is constantly recycled in nature, it’s essential to practice water conservation to ensure a sustainable future for all living beings. Let’s all do our part to save water and protect the environment for generations to come! #SaveWater #WaterIsLife
The amount of water stays (roughly) constant, but the amount of clean, drinkable water in places where we need it is not.
That’s pretty much the long and short of it.
A given amount of water falls as rain in a particular place. If you use more than is available, then you run out.
It’s like why do you worry about running out of money if your job pays you every two weeks?
Lots of areas have a rainy season and a dry season. You need to collect water in the rainy season and then not use it all in the dry season.
Ultimately, it’s a question of energy.
Cleaning water takes energy. Moving water from place to place takes energy.
If we wastefully use clean water from local aquifers, that means we have to spend more energy to clean more water, or to move water from other locations to our location.
If water (in the form of snow) simply deposits itself on a local mountain, and then later melts and flows down to your city, it’s relatively cheap to get it into a form that you can use in your home or business. But if you use more water than that meltwater can provide, you might need to have water trucked in from elsewhere, or build a pipeline to bring it in from elsewhere. Both options use massively more energy than just letting snow melt and flow down to you on its own.
We are not running out of water on this planet. We are running out of usable water.
For example, The amount of water in the oceans is near limitless…. But we can’t use it for drinking or irrigation unless we take the salt out of it, which is expensive to do ( and then it would have to be transported inland ) .
Not every clean water source we use replenishes at the rate we use it. For example, much of the US depends not on the water cycle, but on aquifers, that are limited in amount and refill *very slowly.* And, using more water from aquifers doesn’t mean the clean water in the world will increase by that amount after it is used. There’s *lots* of water in the global system, and that additional amount we are adding makes little difference–after all, the vast majority of water is in the ocean (~96%), and a vast majority of fresh water is ice (~70% of that remaining ~4%).
Using more water than our fresh water sources can replenish genuinely means less for the future, or much more quickly needing to find other sources, which our system isn’t equipped to accommodate now or in the near future–nor are we investing in it enough for it to be viable soon to meet our demands.
Some answers have said that, what is limited is the supply of clean drinkable water. Another issue in water conservation is aquifers. Some areas rely on underground water sources that are being depleted faster than natural processes can refill them. The Ogallala, which provides much of the water for the Great Plains, is commonly cited example.
Many parts of the world donβt have a whole lot of water. Where I live, water is abundant, I am less than a mile from a large river and about 2 miles from an absolutely massive lake. Itβs easy to drill a well here if you donβt live in town. For many parts of the world itβs the opposite, thereβs little to no water on the surface and you have to drill extremely deep to find water underground.
California is a good example of the consequences of using too much water. Lake mead is the primary source of water for California and neighboring southwestern states, this lake is at about 20% capacity versus what it was 100 years ago. It did rise a little bit last year but itβs on track to go dry in the near future. This is largely because the river that feeds it is likewise going dry caused by overuse of water and warmer winters leading to less snow pack in the mountains so thereβs less snow to melt in the spring and feed the lake.
CA also taps into natural underground aquifers and has pumpedΒ so much water out that a lot of them have collapsed. When they collapse, they cannot refill to their old capacity and itβs not some thing you can fix, they are several hundred feet down. This can cause the land to sink up to 20 feet.Β
A lot of wasted water results from farming in place is not suitable for farming like the American Southwest. Not only that farmers are growing crops that require a lot of water like almonds or alfalfa. Growing crops in hot desert like environments means, you have to water crops even more because the harder it is the more water evaporates, itβs one massive feedback loop.
So yes water is not destroyed when we use it. But the water cycle doesnβt necessarily deposit that used water right back where it was.Β
Most water on Earth isn’t safe, as is, for human consumption.
The majority of this “unsuitable” water is in the oceans (the salt content makes it unsafe to drink).
While water is always going through the water cycle, any that ends up in the oceans needs to be treated to make it drinkable; this is very expensive and energy intensive.
Thus we aim to conserve as much of the fresh, drinkable water as we can.
Because cleaning water takes time and a whole lot of energy. And when water stops, which usually happens abruptly, it would take quite a while for humans alone to replenish it. We need nature for this. No other option. Even now, the only way people donβt die during droughts is when someone transports water.
The cycle will eventually pick up but by then many problems and deaths would be caused. So the only way to come out alive of a drought situation is to never be in it
It’s not easy to transfer water across far distances. Water in Wisconsin does no good to people in Arizona. Wasted water might end up draining to or evaporating and ending up in salt water, which is much more costly and energy-intensive to purify.
As someone trained in selecting water sources, maintaining their approval, and monitoringβ¦ there is a lot of good info in this thread mixed (in the same posts) as ignorant. The main issue with conservation is in regards to extremely limited sources and not something you can ELI5β¦ the best I can do is pretend everyone on your street wants to use the water in the same pool as a sourceβ¦. And people blocks away are sharing it to. The pool will get some rain water (aquifers from ground water, etc) recharge, but the pool is always a limited sourceβ¦ so if people are taking long showers, their toilets are leaking, they want to water vegetables that donβt grow well in your environment without extra irrigation, etc, you will eventually deplete the water in the pool. As long as itβs from a reasonably safe source, water treatment (for the amount produced at a plant) is exceptionally cheap. I am going to intentionally avoid going down the rabbit whole with things like maintenance of sources/infrastructure (like what happened in Flint), and just say itβs a really interesting subject. I think this video make point you in the right direction: https://youtu.be/jJVtLbg98Yk?si=CObJX5Bm1oy7qS7w
If you have more questions Iβm happy to do the best I can to answer.
In a lot of areas, water is being pumped out of deep underground reservoirs called aquifers. That water is clean and relatively easy to get to, but it takes years or centuries for rain water to seep back down into the aquifer. Also, it’s not really clear if the aquifer is damaged by pulling all the water out. It may kind of collapse a bit.
I believe that in the US midwest, for instance, the actual height of the ground has dropped several meters over the last century due to pumping water out of the aquifer.
Water is very heavy and impractical to transport long distances. Water is more or less “conserved” but the cycle takes a long time and in the mean time we need clean water at rates that often exceed the rate of the cycle and our ability to treat water. Since water is so heavy and impractical to transport over long distances if an area is experiencing a drought they’re pretty much f’ed since they don’t even have dirty water to clean so they can drink it. All you can get there by truck is more or less just bottles for the bare minimum.
Cuz if you can’t get to the water you still can’t use it even if it exists.
For example, if all the water is in a different country and not yours anymore, well…
Water is sometimes taken from places where we are taking it from/can take it from easily, e.g. reservoirs from dammed up rivers or aquifers (underground lakes or rivers), and put somewhere where we can’t access it, e.g. dumped into the ocean, a river that soon ends in the ocean, or evaporated.
In particular, farming means water is pumped from somewhere where it’s easily accessible, then put onto the field where it evaporates. It’ll rain back down *somewhere*, but mostly not in the same region. Same for watering a lawn. You may have also heard (and/or gotten confused by the claim) that data centers “use up” a lot of water – not all of them do, but many evaporate water to make the cooling more efficient. So again, viewed locally, that water is gone.
When the reservoir supplying a city runs dry and there is no other source for water, that’s really bad. When the aquifer is depleted faster than it refills itself, and wells run dry and have to be dug deeper and deeper and eventually run out completely, that’s bad.
When the city is next to the ocean, they could desalinate, but that’s expensive and takes a lot of time to build, so it’s better if it’s not needed.
That said, in some areas, if you turn on the shower, the water is taken from the local river, cleaned to drinking water standards, runs through your shower, is cleaned in the wastewater treatment plant, and then dumped back into the very same river. None of it is evaporated, and all it takes is some energy to pump it around. In those situations, people will still demand conservation “because water is precious” etc. – and it’s just the “eat your veggies there are starving children in Africa” emotional appeal that people make because it *feels* right, not because it actually makes any sense.
(Conserving *hot* water, like in a shower, is relevant even in such areas because it takes a huge amount of energy to heat the water – much, much more than it takes to pump the water.)
I know I sound paranoid, but it scares me that people leave water in plastic bottles. We donβt get that back!
Water is lost during the recycling process. If the losses exceeds the replenishment rate, you are still facing a shortage.
It’s either
1. Particles in the air
2. Fresh water (snowpack, rivers, lakes, groundwater, reservoirs)
3. In the Ocean.
We can only drink/use water in state #2. The more water we use, the more water we need in state #2 at any time. We can’t wait for ocean water to evaporate and come down as snow and then fill the rivers if we need water *right now*, so we have to stretch the fresh water we have and figure out more ways to trap and store it so it doesn’t evaporate or run into the ocean again.
The water cycle is a closed loop, GLOBALLY.Β But it isn’t a closed loop locally.Β Rain doesn’t always fall back where it came from.Β The water that goes down the drain ends up ultimately in a river and then the ocean, then it evaporates and rains down somewhere else.Β That’s why we have deserts and rain forests.
Because some places are drying out. They’re getting less rain, or the watershed upstream is getting less rain for the river. That’s what climate change mostly is, shifting where the rain falls.
So if a place was accustomed to getting X amount of water, but then gets far less, making smart use of what they do get is very important.
Likewise, places only get so much rain or riverwater, but they keep on making bigger cities or wanting to grow more crops. But there’s only so much water flowing past.
In addition to what people have said here, ground water pumped from aquifers is being used to irrigate much of the West and Midwest. This water is not rechargeable in our lifetimes and farmers are pumping it out (with lots of waste) at unsustainable rates. Once itβs gone, itβs gone.