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Friday, September 20, 2013

My Water Usage vs the UK's Profile by -JV

The purpose of this H20 action project was to find my daily water usage which I learned was 74 gallons .Then I compared my daily water usage to another country's. I picked the UK whose daily water usage is 39 gallons. Then I had to find the closest water source to collect my 74 gallons and see how long it would take to carry my water usage back to my house. I learned that in a lot of countries, people do not have access to water and if they do, it is not clean enough to drink. They also have to walk and carry it miles away from their home. I like finding out my daily water usage.

Photography JV Mi Consumo De Agua 2013.*

The purpose of this H20 action project was to find my daily water usage, which I learned was 74 gallons. Then I compared my daily water usage to that of an average individual in the UK. I found that the average person in the UK uses 39 gallons of water a day- significantly less that what I use! After doing these calculations, I had to find a water source near my school, in order to collect my daily water usage of 74 gallons and see how long it would take me to carry that amount back to school. I learned that in a lot of countries, people do not have access to water, and if they do, it is not clean enough to drink. They also have to walk and carry it x # of miles away from their home. My experience of carrying water taught me that it is heavy and tiring, and I cannot imagine other countries having to carry water like I did. I liked finding out my daily water usage, because it taught me a lot about the need for water conservation. 


After my field experience of carrying my daily water use, I wanted to see how water usage varies globally, so I created a poster comparing my use that of the UK. The first thing that you see on my poster is the title, which says, "My Water Usage" in Spanish. On my poster, you will see two drawings, which visualize my water usage compared to UK's. I used cups to represent the amount of water, where percentages of water I use in different categories "fill" the cups. The cups are divided into hygiene, consumption, cleaning, and other. Category percents are listed, as well as the approach I took to arrive at these percentages. For example, in order to find percent daily use of the total, I took each category and divided by the total use (either 74 gallons for me or 39 gallons for the UK), and multiplied by 100. On the bottom of my chart, you see the difference between my usage of water and the UK's (35 gallons total) . Lastly, you see how long it would take me to carry my daily water usage from the nearest water source (148 hours total).



Motivated by the numbers I'd seen, I decided to do some specific research on how the UK uses it's daily water of 39 gallons. I found that the UK uses 25 gallons for hygiene, 4 gallons for consumption, 8 gallons for cleaning, and 2 gallons for other. You can see how different my water usage plays out compared to the UK. I also research the UK's water prices, which I found totals $549 a year. That number is higher than the US , which is $523 a year. Perhaps the increased water expense does not allow someone in the UK to purchase and use water as readily as someone in the U.S. Finally, I learned that the UK's water has a funny taste which is caused by high mineral content found in many areas in the UK. Perhaps this is another reason as to why people typically consume less in the UK than where I live.

From this experience, I learned how important it is to save water. One way to help the water shortage is more efficient use of water, by limiting and paying attention to how much water we use in each day. For example, we need to not let the water run for unnecessary reasons. My advice gained from this investigation is to save as much water as you can, and do not take long showers; Reuse water, do not waste water in any way. By cutting back on our water usage, the water supply can really add up.


*All Photography JV (2013) Mi Consumo De Aqua.

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