Water Use explorations:

According to the EPA, the average American uses 80 gallons a day for household and hygienic use. The average household uses 300 gallons per day. According to WHO, An American uses about 2X as much as an English, 5X as much as a Japanese and 50X as much as an African.

Below is a graph that shows water use per sector in Washington State. Note that “public supply” == water supplied to homes and businesses.

• Things to feel good about:
  • the city of Seattle owns loads of land where it collects water for the city, thereby ensuring clean and plentiful supply.
  • Higher density in our city == wiser water usage due to fewer lawns.
  • From Seattle Public Utilities: “In percentage terms, total Seattle system water consumption has declined 31% since 1990 while population has increased 39%. As a result, total consumption per capita is 50% less than it was in 1990.”
  • most gains were made by just making toilets etc more efficient and didn’t rely on trying to change peoples habits.
  • the average family saves around $400 per year by switching to more efficient fixtures. Most items pay off themselves in 1 year making it easy for folks to switch.
  • Reducing use directly equates to higher levels of water in reservoirs and saves the utilities the power required to pump the water to you.
• Shitty things:
  • Reduced water availability in our region translates to reduced power output from dams. == around 9% reduction in last 7 years. Increased drought will require utilities to buy power from potentially unclean sources.
  • As our population continues to grow, resources will become more strained.
  • 40% of food grown in the US is wasted and therefore 40% of the water used to grow that food is also wasted.
  • The environment is changing and the last few Seattle summers have begun to show reversing water trends.
  • Eastern Washington uses the most water (for irrigation) and is currently in drought – Jay inslee has declared it an emergency.
  • 12% of all water use is just from leaks.
  • each gallon of water requires 100W of power to deliver to you.
  • You are wasting a bunch of money!

For most people, the money is the real motivator and conservation is surprisingly lucrative. For each 2 gallons you reduce use by per day, you save 22 to 24 dollars per year. To put that further in perspective, Thats roughly one toilet flush per day. That also reduces your power consumption (spent to pump that water to you) by 73KW of power!

Within a household, the following is the general breakdown of use:

What your bill looks like: For us at home, water costs change seasonally- being more expensive in summer and they are progressive, in that higher usage equates to higher rates. Also included in your bill is a sewer treatment cost. The sewer treatment cost is 3x the water supply cost and the reason why it pays to conserve.

To help you figure our what you use and how you could conserve water and save money, I made this calculator in google sheets. feel free to make a copy and put in your numbers. these are our numbers. let me know too if you have improvements you would want to make or any questions! and please share what you learn!

Ultimate Water Use Calculator!

How can you further reduce water usage outside your home?

• Reduce your cloud storage! this interesting article shows the impacts of data center cooling and power usage on our infrastructure
• Reduce food waste. Again, 40% of US food is wasted and therefore the water used to grow and wash that food is also wasted.
• Buy less water intensive foods see below:

Stay tuned: Power Usage Calculator coming soon!