An average American shower uses approximately 15.8 to 17.2 gallons of water and lasts roughly 8 minutes, with a flow rate of 2.1 gallons per minute. So over a year that's an average of 6,022.5 gallons of water I use in the shower. 6022.5 gallons of water is approximately 22,796 liters, weighs about 50,223 pounds (25.1 tons), and would fill roughly 150 standard bathtubs.
An average bath typically uses between 30 to 50 gallons of water. While standard bathtubs may have a higher maximum capacity, most people fill them halfway, consuming an average of 30–40 gallons. Now if you took a bath everyday of the year that is 12,775 gallons of water (using 35 gallons as an average bath).
So at least my showers are using way less water than taking baths. I do take baths once in a while, but 95 percent of the time I'm taking showers. So that makes me wonder other than showers/baths, how much water am I using each day?
The average American uses approximately 80 to 100 gallons of water per day at home, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). This daily usage includes indoor activities like showering, flushing toilets, washing clothes, and cooking, with toilet flushing being the largest indoor water consumer. That's an average of 32,850 gallons of water I am using each year. And that's just me!
That's pretty crazy to think about. That's a lot of water! So then my brain was working in the weird way that it does, so I needed to see how many gallons of water an ocean holds. So I looked up information on the Pacific Ocean. Now this isn't exact by any means, but they estimate the Pacific Oceans holds 187,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water. That's quite a bit! If drained at 1 million gallons per day, it would take over 500 billion years to empty.
So, yes with 5 oceans, tons of rivers, lakes and ponds there is a lot of water on Earth. But, not all of us have clean water to drink and take showers in. So just take a minute and think about the water you may be wasting that you don't need to. Brushing your teeth, you don't need the water on whole time. Taking a 10 minute shower. Maybe cut it down to 8 minutes or less. Because being in a situation where we don't have clean water to use would be horrible. That's your thought of the day.
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