The Big Thirst looming

Charles Fishman,  a water revolution looming.


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.


Leave a Reply
