Today is World Water Day. It is an opportunity for all of us to stop and think for a moment about how precious our water is. It is a time to remember where our water comes from and reflect on whether we are using this precious resource wisely. It’s time to take action to reduce our wasteful water consumption.
In the UAE we have a unique water situation -- most household water is produced by a very costly and energy intensive process of desalination.
While desalination is crucial to meet our everyday needs, it does come with impacts that threaten our environment and ultimately our own health.
- Increased water production to meet our needs is increasing our carbon footprint due to the high amounts of fossil fuel based energy required to desalinate sea water; these carbon emissions are leading to global warming and climate change.
- The brine produced as a result of desalination is also released into the sea, damaging the UAE’s valuable and unique marine ecosystems.
Our per capita water consumption is also 3 times the average global water consumption. We estimate that up to 252 litres of water is wasted every day by the average UAE resident:
- 34 litres of water is wasted when we leave the taps running whilst we brush our teeth, shave, and wash our vegetables.
- 38 litres of water is wasted when we take a bath rather than a shower
- 180 litres of water is wasted when we use a hose to wash our car rather than a bucket.
¨`·.·´¨) Always
`·.¸(¨`·.·´¨) Keep
(¨`·.·´¨)¸.·´ Smiling!
`·.¸.·´
posted by munju
