A dripping faucet can waste 15-21 gallons of water a day. A leaking toilet can use 90,000 gallons of water in a month. Get out the wrench and change the washers on your sinks and showers, or get new washerless faucets. Keeping your existing equipment well maintained is probably the easiest and cheapest way to start saving water.

There is no resource more precious than water. There is also no resource that is misused, abused, misallocated, and misunderstood the way water is. Safe drinking water, healthy and intact natural ecosystems, and a stable food supply are a few of the things at stake as our water supply is put under greater and greater stress. Many people have had water-saving etiquette pumped into them at one point or another, so hopefully we can make a good case for conserving the stuff with practical, everyday water-saving strategies as well as some more high-tech approaches.

WATER IN NUMBERS

2.5 gallons: The amount of water per person much of the world is allocated.

400 gallons: The amount of water per person used by the average American citizen; 30 percent of this is used for outdoor purposes, such as watering the lawn.

70 percent: The amount of worldwide water use that is allocated to farming; most of these farming irrigation systems operate at only 40 percent efficiency. According to a 2002 article by Lester Brown, aquifers are depleting all over the world—in China by 2-3 metres per year. In the US, the Ogallala aquifer is shrinking rapidly. In India, aquifers are going down by 3 metres per year, in Mexico by 3.3 meters per year.

263: The number of rivers that either cross or demarcate international political boundaries, in addition to countless aquifers. According to the Atlas of International Freshwater Agreement, 90 percent of countries in the world must share these water basins with at least one or two other states. Major conflicts such as Darfur have been connected to water shortages, and lack of access to clean water.

1430: Gallons of water per capita in the United States; only 100 gallons of that is household use per person as most is used for agriculture, according to water expert Peter Gleick.

88 percent: Of deaths from diarrhea are caused from unsafe drinking water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene, and lack of access to sanitation; this translates to more than 1.5 million of the 1.9 million children under five who perish from diarrhea each year. This amounts to 18% of all under-five deaths and means that more than 4,000 children are dying every day as a result of diarrhoeal diseases.

$11.3 billion: The amount of money required to provide basic levels of service for drinking and waste water in Africa and Asia.

$35 billion: the amount of money spent on bottled water in the most developed countries in the world.

1.5 million: Barrels of crude oil used for making PET water bottles, globally. This is enough oil to fuel 100,000 American cars for a year.

2.7 tons: The amount of plastic used to bottle water. 86 percent become garbage or litter.

THE FACTS

A dripping faucet can waste 15-21 gallons of water a day. A leaking toilet can use 90,000 gallons of water in a month.