Blog #1

Water scarcity is a major concern in our day and age. Nearly every continent is affected by it and billions of people around the world suffer from lack of clean drinking water. This is part of the reason why I have chosen to make a change in my water consumption over the next three weeks. Here in America and at Colorado College, I have not felt at all pressed to conserve the amount of water I use. Hot and cold water are always available, therefore I am vowing to cut down on my consumption over the next two and half weeks and hopefully the habit will stick.

 Some of the rules will be
 • 30 second showers with cold water only(5 minute showers save 1,000 gallons a month, so 30 seconds should be a great deal more approximately 16,500 gallons)
 • Flushing the toilet and washing of hands only after excretion(an average toilet uses around 3.5 gallons per flush so flushing only once or twice a day will conserve roughly 21 gallons a day)
 • Drinking only from my Nalgene bottle (less dishes to be washed, as well as an added benefit of cutting down on my plastic consumption and disposal)

 I also understand that one person making a change is beneficial for the environment but a group of people is even more powerful, so one of my challenges will be to explain how easy it is to conserve water to other students on campus during these next few weeks.

 Some statistics -
 The U.N. predicts that By 2025, 1800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.
 * 3.9 trillion gallons of water are consumed in the United States per month. (AWWA Journal, June 2006)
 * The average American uses 176 gallons of water per day compared to 5 gallons of water the average African family uses each day. (www.water.org)
 * An estimated 2.4 billion people lack adequate sanitation and 1.1 billion people are without access to safe water. (WHO-UNICEF, 2004)

 Much of this will not be comfortable, cold showers are definitely enjoyable in the summertime but they may not feel the best during the Colorado Winter. Also my hall neighbors will most likely not appreciate opening the stall to find a yellow toilet bowl, but in the long run what value is comfort going have when the world is drying up or better yet when I’m dying? Comfort may seem like an important factor in many decisions but it’s starting to seem more and more like a distraction and in my opinion it’s one of the biggest reasons why money controls a great deal of human thinking. In other words if the environment or even concern for other humans and animals came before money did, the world would be a different place, therefore comfort could actually be seen as a hindrance. So maybe the big thing that I’ll take away from this project is the beginning of a new mindset for myself, one that isn't driven by comfort, but instead focused on more productive undertakings.