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Explain water to me

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Coach O

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The Super Bowl ad about brushing your teeth caused a heated debate at the party I was attending. Two big discussion points were:

1. If I am in Michigan using 4 gallons to brush my teeth, and reduce that usage to 2 gallons, how does that help a poor, water-less child in Uruguay?

2. Water is never truly "wasted." There is the same amount of water, always.

Can any of you science geeks explain water to an old English major?
 
It was an ad for Colgate disguised as a PSA. Don't think about it too hard.
 
Coach O said:
1. If I am in Michigan using 4 gallons to brush my teeth, and reduce that usage to 2 gallons, how does that help a poor, water-less child in Uruguay?

Can any of you science geeks explain water to an old English major?
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Four gallons in Michigan is the same as 2 gallons in Uruguay after accounting for the lead. Does that help?
 
There is a fi it any of clean, easy to get water. Even in the US.

The ad is trying to make you aware that we waste clean, potable waterproof or have you already forgotten about the crisis in California and the west.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
There is a fi it any of clean, easy to get water. Even in the US.

The ad is trying to make you aware that we waste clean, potable waterproof or have you already forgotten about the crisis in California and the west.
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I live in Sacramento. That's what prompted the discussion at this Super Bowl party. None of us truly understand how you can "waste" water, outside of washing your car or watering your lawn. If it goes down your drain, don't we still "have" it? It needs to be cleaned again, sure...but we all think it is still here.
 
You could say the same thing for any form of matter. "It needs to be changed into its current state again, sure."
 
Coach O said:
I live in Sacramento. That's what prompted the discussion at this Super Bowl party. None of us truly understand how you can "waste" water, outside of washing your car or watering your lawn. If it goes down your drain, don't we still "have" it? It needs to be cleaned again, sure...but we all think it is still here.
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Billions of gallons of semi-treated wastewater is pumped into rivers and oceans each year. So no, it's not "still here".

And to replace that water, you have to pump water from the delta and the groundwater, which draws in salt water to replace it. So your are ruining your aquifer as well.

So turn off your faucet when you brush.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
Billions of gallons of semi-treated wastewater is pumped into rivers and oceans each year. So no, it's not "still here".

And to replace that water, you have to pump water from the delta and the groundwater, which draws in salt water to replace it. So your are ruining your aquifer as well.

So turn off your faucet when you brush.
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I don't know much about these things, but isn't personal water use minuscule in comparison to water used on agriculture?
 
Sure, but water used to grow crops isn't really "wasted."
 
Right, but turning off the water while you brush your teeth (or taking shorter showers, or whatever) barely moves the register, even if we all do it.
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
Right, but turning off the water while you brush your teeth (or taking shorter showers, or whatever) barely moves the register, even if we all do it.
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Actually, The point of the PSA is to get everyone to do it. If we all (that is, over 300 million Americans) each used on less gallon of water per day, that is over 300 million gallons per day, or over 100 billion gallons per year. That moves the needle.
 
We have plenty of water it just happens to be salted, the cost and technology to take salt out of water will be similar to solar energy when push come to shove finally
 
it's 2016 and we're trying to explain water conservation to college graduates?
 
Leaving the water running is the leading cause of elevated levels of dihydrogen monoxide.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
Billions of gallons of semi-treated wastewater is pumped into rivers and oceans each year. So no, it's not "still here".

And to replace that water, you have to pump water from the delta and the groundwater, which draws in salt water to replace it. So your are ruining your aquifer as well.

So turn off your faucet when you brush.
Click to expand...


That may be accurate in come cases, but not in general.

Water (for all intents and purposes) isn't finite (like oil) per se because there is a water cycle and water is replenished (in general), but the amount of water available to support a population at any given time is finite. For instance, a town of 10,000 people could probably live off of one reservoir without problems....they'd be able to use as much as they wanted without making much of a dent because the reservoir would be deep enough and the town would get enough rain to replenish whatever the town uses. However if that town were 500,000 people then all of a sudden that reservoir isn't big enough....they might have to dam a river to create another reservoir or drill a bunch of wells that could deplete a large aquifer over time. Barring extreme drought, the water will never truly be gone, but a population's water use can surpass the local area's carrying capacity meaning that the population's demand for water is more than the environment can supply and that's when you get into pretty big problems (downstream environmental and political problems)....the idea of turning your water off is just don't waste water....not because it'll never come back, but because you're just unnecessarily pushing your communities water demand toward the carrying capacity of the local environment.
 
I've mentally wrestled with which wastes more: using disposable dishes and throwing them away, or running the water to wash individual reusable dishes.

(Note this refers to an office environment where no dish is safe being left in the kitchen and there is no dishwasher available, so it's paper plate or handwash.)
 
So it could be rephrased "Don't waste all the resources, money, and time it takes to bring that water back into your faucet."
 
PhDeac said:
So it could be rephrased "Don't waste all the resources, money, and time it takes to bring that water back into your faucet."
Click to expand...

Right. This was what we kept coming back to.
 
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