Water conservation is important for people to participate in for many reasons. One of the main reasons for water conservation is for the amount of water that people have access to. 97% of the world's water is salt water, which humans are unable to drink, this means the people can only drink 3% of the world's water. Of that 3% of water that people are able to drink, about ⅔ of it is locked in ice caps which humans aren't able to access. This means that only 1% of the world's water is accessible and drinkable for humans, and if we want our species to continue to thrive like it has been for the next hundreds of years, then we will need to cut back on our water usage. Also, not only do humans need water to survive but so do hundreds of other species, and the amount of water humans consume has already affected hundreds of species. A final reason why water conservation is important is due to the fact that hundreds of ecosystems rely on water to thrive. Humans and animals alike live in these ecosystems,and These ecosystems need water to survive, and without it they would die, which would intern leave hundreds of species and people out of their homes, and possible lead them to be extinct. Those are just three of the many reasons that water conservation is important.
For this water meter experiment, I did have a water meter but I started late because I was sick so what my teacher had me do was take measurements for every water giving thing in my household by how many gallons of water they gave out. For example when I was measuring my shower, I took one of the big buckets that my dad had in the garage and stuck it under all of my showers. After that I turned my shower on full blast for thirty seconds then measured how many gallons the bucket had been filled and then multiplied that total by two too see how many gallons would've been filled in one minute. I did this for all of my water appliances. Every night for two weeks asked my family members how many times they had used each appliance that day and how much water they had drunk as well as how many times my dogs water bowl had been filled every day. By doing that I was able too figure out how much water had been used in a day. At the end of each week, we added up how much water our family used each week, and then we compared each week to figure out if we used more water or less water than the week before.
In the first week my family and I used 1122.46 gallons of water. In the second week my family and I used 1559.97 gallons of water. In the second week my family actually ended up using more water than what we had hoped for, which was less water. We actually ended up using 447.57 gallons more than the week before. I think that this happened for many reasons. One of the reasons being that my dad had been out of town for that majority of the first week on bisniss, so we had one more person to add to water usage to the amount of water we used. Also for the first week I was out for the first four days due to surgery, so I had to use averages for those four days, so my data for that week missed out on laundry day and other things of that sort, which added a lot to my second weeks total. I also think that my family did a pretty good job with trying to cut back on water, but I definitely could have talked to them. I think that it's really hard to break habits because it's something that people are used too, and something they've been doing for a while so it's hard for people to do something that they aren't used too.
Chloe Gouda