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Can you find a used 1 litre bottle? Or measure out 1,000 millilitres into a jug?
Imagine 140 one litre bottles filled with water – that is the average amount of water each person in the UK uses…every day! For us, it is so simple to ‘just turn on the tap’, have you ever thought about how many times you turn on the tap each day? Or that we rely on that clean water for drinking, cooking, washing clothes, washing dishes, flushing toilets and showering/bathing.
It’s time to put your thinking caps on … can you work out how many litres of water you use to wash yourself per week? You’ll need to set a timer next time you have a shower and see how long you spend in there (please ask your parent / carer first, and don’t get the timing device wet!). An average shower uses 8 litres of water per minute.
Or if you normally have a bath - a typical bath uses 80 litres of water! If you share your water with one of your family members you could half/third your water usage.
Heating our water creates carbon emissions that are leading to climate change – much household water is heated by a fossil-fuel (gas or oil) fired boiler, or possibly by an electric heater. However, it’s not just heating water that creates carbon emissions. Carbon emissions are also generated when we use energy to pump, treat and deliver cold water to our homes and to dispose of waste water.
Your challenge this week is to take a simple step to cut your carbon emissions – can you share your bath water? Have a smaller bath? Have a shower instead? Reduce your time in the shower? Can you reduce your bath / shower water consumption by a third?
Remember to HIT THE RED BUTTON and tell us when you have saved water this week!
Climate Change will mainly affect people through water: storms, droughts, melting glaciers, rising sea-levels. In many parts of the world it will affect the availability of clean drinking water and food; give rise to hygiene and sanitation problems including water-borne diseases; and impact on children’s educational opportunities and overall poverty levels.
In 2015 the United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals – you may have heard of them? They are an international commitment to end poverty in all forms and dimensions by 2030. Goal number 6 is ‘clean water and sanitation’, number 13 is ‘climate action’ – they all need to be undertaken simultaneously to achieve an end to poverty.
https://www.globalgoals.org Many charities are helping achieve these goals – you may like to watch this Wateraid video
In the UK we are very fortunate to have plentiful fresh clean water provided to our homes, but we mustn’t waste it! When you have calculated how much water you use for your showers and baths and managed to reduce it - don’t forget to HIT THE RED BUTTON.
