But We Can All Help!
Thankfully, BEF has a plan to help you stop being part of the problem, and start being part of the solution. BEF Water Restoration Certificates are a new way to balance your water use by returning an equal amount of water back to critically dewatered rivers and streams.
When you buy WRC's you'll also receive up to $40 worth of water conservation devices for FREE. If all U.S. households installed water conservation devices, water use would decrease 30%, saving an estimated 5.4 billion gallons of water per day!
Source: Drinktap.org
Nature Needs Water Too
We often withdraw so much water that ecosystems and their natural inhabitants, like fish and wildlife, are left without enough water to survive. Partly as a result of this, more than 20 percent of the world's known 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct or imperiled in recent decades. In the United States, 303 fish species, or 37 percent of the freshwater fish fauna, are at risk of extinction; 17 species have already gone extinct, mostly within the past century.
Source: The Nature Conservancy
Water Scarcity Affects Us All
The United Nations estimates that by 2050, as much as three quarters of the earth's population could face scarcities of freshwater. Here in the U.S. a 2003 survey by the General Accounting Office found that water managers in 36 states "anticipate water shortages locally, regionally or statewide within the next ten years."
Source: U.S. General Accounting Office
We Rely Heavily on Finite Groundwater Reserves
The U.S. is dependent on groundwater for 50% of its daily water. Groundwater is mined from aquifers that contain a finite amount of water. Because these aquifers are so far below ground, rain and surface waters do not replenish the water we take out. Once these groundwater sources are depleted they're effectively gone forever.
Source: Blue Covenant, Maude Barlowe (Senior Advisor on Water to The United Nations)
We Use A Lot of Water
On average, each American uses more than 100 gallons of water every day for drinking, washing and cooking. That's double the amount used by Europeans and 40 times as much as the average person in the developing world.
Source: Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC)
Fresh Water is Scarce
Most of the Earth's water is saltwater (97.5%) with much of the remaining freshwater frozen in polar ice or otherwise inaccessible to us. In fact, humans and all other life that requires freshwater must share less than 0.5% of the water on Earth. That's only about the size of this marble in comparison to the size of the Earth.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
