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March 11, 2007
Water conservation
I just found this little statistical gem in Becker's recent article on conserving water effectively:
Many discussions of water conservation create the impression that households are large and inefficient users of clean water for drinking, eating, bathing, and toilet flushing. That is a myth. About 40 per cent of all the freshwater use in the United States is for irrigating land for agriculture, another 40 percent is used to produce power, and only 8 percent is used for domestic use; these percentages are similar in other countries. Moreover, about a third of all the water used by households in rich countries goes to water lawns and for other out door purposes, so probably no more than about 5 per cent of the total demand for water is for personal use.
Think about that the next time you have to flush twice.
Blog by Dan at March 11, 2007 07:10 PM
Comments
But the low-volume flush toilets are the REASON that we only use 8%, right? :-)
Sigh. Yet another example of well-meaning but ill-informed decisions which cause more harm than good. (Australia's ban on incandescent lightbulbs is another, imho.)
This sort of thing makes it very hard to be a Liberal these days! :-)
Posted by: hdan at March 12, 2007 10:39 AM