How careful are we in our use of one of the Earth’s most precious resource, water?

If we were to experience a high category hurricane where our drinkable water supply would no longer be healthy, we would probably take greater care and have greater awareness about this resource.

Do we need to have a catastrophe to occur to be motivated to make changes in how we live?

In fact, the United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs (UNDESA) says that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in areas of absolute water scarcity. Currently, according to UNDESA, 700 million people in 43 countries suffer from water scarcity.

Nature Conservancy, a leading environmental research organization, reported that the top 100 cities occupy less than one percent of the planet’s surface area, but occupy 12 percent of water sources.

Hopefully, these facts will inspire us to become more aware of our water usage.

We need to begin today to preserve our water supply so that those predictions will not become reality. After concern, I believe, awareness and action on our part is most important in this endeavor.

We need to act with consciousness and not habit, recognizing those many opportunities where we can preserve water in our use of it. Such opportunities would be not keeping the faucet water running as we rinse off food particles from the dishes in preparation for placing them in the dishwasher; or, when we eat at restaurants, not getting any more water to drink than what we will use. The list of opportunities goes on and on and our conscious care of how we use water would add to the list. What would you add to this list?