Charles Fishman, a water revolution looming.
FACTS ABOUT WATER
A few facts on water compiled from the book and blog of Charles Fishman:
The United States uses 410 billion gallons of water a day, everything from filling morning coffee cups to irrigating crops and cooling nuclear plants.
In four days, the United States uses more water than the world uses oil in a year.
At 1,300 gallons a day, the U.S. leads the world in per person water use.
Electrical production is the biggest water user in the U.S.; each American uses 250 gallons of water each day to generate electricity used at home.
One in four people in the world – 1.6 billion – must walk at least 1 kilometer each day to get water and carry it home.
The average American flushes the toilet five times a day, which comes to 5.7 billion gallons of clean drinking water down the toilet every day.
Americans spend almost as much each year buying bottled water ($21 billion) as they do maintaining the nation’s entire water system ($29 billion), even though bottled water is often just a refiltered version of municipal tap water.
300 tons of water are required to manufacture 1 ton of steel.
