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How much water do you think you use every day?
You drink some. You take a shower. Maybe you water the garden or even throw water balloons. On average, each person in the U.S. uses about 100 gallons of water a day. That’s about as much as you’d use taking four five-minute showers. How do you use all that water? Well, there’s washing, cooking, and other stuff. And if you count how much water goes into the food you eat and other things you use, the number gets even higher. For example, it takes 150 gallons of water to grow and produce one loaf of bread. It takes the same amount to make enough paper for one Sunday newspaper. Guess how much water it takes to make one new car. Believe it or not, making a car takes more than 39,000 gallons. Every year, the Earth has new people on it, and each of us needs water. But Earth has only so much water, and we can’t make more. So we have to conserve the water we have.
▲ It looks like there’s a lot of water on Earth. In fact, two-thirds of this planet is covered with water. But only about 1 percent of that water is even close to drinkable. Another 2 percent is frozen in glaciers. Those are like huge ice cubes, and they’re mostly at the North and South Poles. The rest of the water—97 percent—is salty seawater. Desalination means taking the salt out of seawater. It has been around since the time of Aristotle, in the fourth century B.C. There are basically two ways to do it. One is to boil salt water and collect the steam, which has no salt. The other way is to move the salt water through a filter that takes out the salt. The largest desalination plant in the world is in Israel. It provides 20 percent of the country’s fresh water.
If all Earth’s water were put in a bottle...
We get water from rain, snow, and other ways it falls out of the sky. But it doesn’t rain or snow every day. So how can we make sure we’ll always have enough water? We need to be smart about how we use what we have. Here are some ways you can help. ▼
Five Ways You and Your Family Can Save Water
Turn off the water while brushing your teeth.
