The Canary Islands, a group of islands off of Western Sahara, and Dubai, a city in United Arab Emirates, are particularly water strapped vacation destinations. This new infographic shows how these hotels are using their own desalination and water conservation techniques to save this precious resource.

The Canary Islands have always been water stressed because they have few rivers or sources of fresh water on the islands. As a result, getting clean drinking water has always been a problem. Gran Melia, an upscale hotel in the Canary Islands, is now using its own desalination technology to treat seawater. Their desalination system produces water for their hotel by extracting and converting seawater. They also recycle water at the hotel to be used on their gardens.

The residents of UAE have some of the highest per capita water use of any country in the world. And at the same time, Western Sahara and UAE are number 1 and number 2 on the list of the world’s most water stressed nations. The Park Hyatt in Dubai is taking steps toward conserving water by treating wastewater with reverse osmosis. Using this filtration process saves enough water to fill 62 Olympic size pools per year. But these are very small steps when you consider that while tourism is an industry in itself that puts significant amounts of money toward each nation’s economy, there has to be a balance between smart water use and tourism. These new water technologies are a good place to start. But much more needs to be done.

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Image: elope201

The post Hotel Water Conservation and Desalination Technology [Infographic] appeared first on EcoSalon.

The new film “Watermark” looks at our massive dependence on a finite resource.

The opening scene of “Watermark,” a new film from Edward Burtynsky and Jennifer Baichwal, creates a disorienting effect that leaves the viewer feeling tiny against the pure force of water. The film takes features 20 stories across 10 countries in what director Baichwal, (“Manufactured Landscapes” and “Payback”), calls a “river-like rhythm.” Inspired by Burtynsky’s images, the numerous stories create an overarching narrative around the ways we use, control and pollute water.

After working with Butynsky on “Manufactured Landscapes” (2006), Baichwal wanted to team up with the photographer again. His work had been the focus of her previous film about industrial manufacturing. When she saw the images he had been working on for a National Geographic essay about water in California, she knew it was the next film.

She felt that the dire tone of other environmental docs failed. Instead Watermark presents a visually compelling story that combines aerial vantages, macros shots and time lapses to present a holistic and artistic perspective. Baichwal said they wanted to capture the full reach of human interaction with water, resulting in a 90 minute film edited from 200 hours of footage.

“Watermark” moves between the expansive industrial projects around water, like China’s Xiluodu Dam, which is six times the size of the Hoover Dam, and the individual human interactions with water, such as the water guard pacing the rice paddies of Yunnan, making sure no one diverts his family’s supply. The lone guard’s patrol of trickling waterways contrasts with the Maha Kumbh Mela, a ritual gathering of 30 million people who bathe in a sacred river. Baichwal said the Maha Kumbh Mela served as the “spiritual connection to the water.”

“We had broad and respectful ways of filming these stories,” Baichwal said. “Instead of having experts talking about it, we had the people living it.”

Another story focuses on the Dhaka, Bangledesh, leather tanneries that pump chemicals into the local water supply, highlighting the interconnectedness of different water usages. The same water used to process hides is later used for washing people and their clothes. In another scene the parched Colorado River Delta serves as a distinct contrast to the pools of Discovery Bay, a community built right onto the California Delta, built mere feet away from a body of water. California agriculture needs the scarce resource to produce the substantial amounts of produce it supplies the rest of the country, while the abalone farms near China’s Fujian coast are built into the water itself. There are parallels and divergences in how water is used by people around the world, but the recurring theme is that it is necessary for existence.

“It’s interesting living in Canada, which has about twenty percent of world’s fresh water supply. It’s very easy to take advantage of it,” Baichwal said. “When you see the devastating effects of water pollution it’s impossible to take it for granted.”

She wanted to create a greater awareness of and respect for water, but wanted to approach it different from other environmental documentaries. Instead of inundating viewers with interviews from experts, she chose a more philosophical approach. “We wanted to create a river – we wanted to immerse viewers in it,” Baichwal explained.

“I’m much more interested in understanding the complexity. Acknowledging complexity means not making quick judgements,” she said. “We worked hard on this film. Wanted to open up a space and move people. The power of film is that it can move you. The goal of the film is to do that and create an awareness, or expand our awareness, of this incredible natural force.”

Burtynsky’s studio is featured frequently as he makes edits to his book, Burtynsky-Water, which spans five years of work. The photographs were also part of a traveling exhibition in 2013, making this project a multi-platform experience.

The film, which won Best Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards and Best Canadian Film from the Toronto Film Critics Association, is playing around the USA in limited release.- Bianca Hernandez

This article originally appears on Sierra Magazine

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President Obama says the ongoing California drought is an example of what’s in store if we continue to ignore climate change. According to scientists, the relationship between drought and climate change isn’t quite that simple.

California is a beautiful and geographically diverse place. There are few places in the world where you can eat breakfast on the ski slopes and have dinner by the ocean. Sadly, the California of the future might be a very different place. Thanks to below normal levels of rain for the past three years, the California drought has become a statewide emergency worthy of federal attention.

President Obama recently visited the state to observe to discuss how the government will provide assistance to farmers and businesses who are suffering from a lack of water. During a speech, Obama suggested climate change as an explanation for the California drought, an assertion that’s drawn some surprise criticism from the scientific community.

For those who acknowledge human-accelerated climate change, the link seems to make perfect sense. We already know that climate change is driving extreme weather events around the globe. 2013 was tied with 2003 as the fourth-warmest year since records began in 1880, and global temperatures were higher than average for the 37th consecutive year. Where Obama went wrong, however, was framing the relationship between climate change and the California drought as one of cause and effect.

Drought has always been a part of life in the arid Southwest. “…extreme droughts have happened in the state before, and the experts say this one bears a notable resemblance to some of those, including a crippling drought in 1976 and 1977,” reports the New York Times. In light of this history, one can hardly claim that climate change suddenly caused the California drought. What we can say is that climate change is altering and exacerbating normal weather patterns around the world. In essence, climate change isn’t causing the California drought, but it is making a recovery less likely.

Thanks to climate change, any precipitation in California evaporates more rapidly, intensifying the effects of the drought on agriculture in particular. “We are going through a pattern we’ve seen before, but we’re doing it in a warmer environment,” Michael Anderson, the California state climatologist, told NY Times.

Joseph Romm elaborated on this concept in his 2011 literature review in the journal Nature:

“Precipitation patterns are expected to shift, expanding the dry subtropics. What precipitation there is will probably come in extreme deluges, resulting in runoff rather than drought alleviation. Warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the Sun’s energy goes into baking the soil, leading to a further increase in air temperature. That is why, for instance, so many temperature records were set for the United States in the 1930s Dust Bowl; and why, in 2011, drought-stricken Texas saw the hottest summer ever recorded for a US state. Finally, many regions are expected to see earlier snowmelt, so less water will be stored on mountain tops for the summer dry season.”

So yes, semantically Obama was mistaken when he pointed to the California drought as a living example of climate change. But he was absolutely correct in pointing out a relationship between the two–a relationship that’s become dysfunctional thanks to human behavior.

The symptoms of the California drought, contaminated drinking water, food shortages, and threats to energy security: these are indeed waiting for the rest of the world if we refuse to take swift and definitive action on climate change.

Related on Ecosalon

Obama’s State of the Union: Climate Change and Contradictions

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Image: jondissed

The post Is Climate Change Causing the Epic California Drought? Yes and No appeared first on EcoSalon.

Want a concrete plant to stop global warming? Just ask Daryl Hannah.

Actress and outspoken environmentalist, Daryl Hannah, recently weighed in on the Wall Street Journal’s blog The Experts in response to the question: “What – if anything – should we do about [global warming]?”

The actress laid out five areas of focus. First up is safeguarding our food and water supply through efficient management and conservation.

Hannah then said that extreme forms of fossil fuel extraction, such as fracking and deep-water drilling, need to be phased out as quickly as possible.

We must also immediately lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, while investing in a combination of decentralized renewable energy.

Hannah urges us to rebuild our soil through regenerative organic farming practices. This can be accomplished through composting, biochar, brown coal, Mycorrhizal fungi, vermiculture and managed livestock.

“If food waste was a country, it would be the third biggest greenhouse-gas emitter behind the U.S. and China,” she said. Soil vitality can be restored, and methane can be reduced, by diverting organic waste away from landfills and livestock manure from ponds.

Hannah also pointed out that the aforementioned practices will do more than simply reduce carbon emissions:

“Maximizing regional self-sufficiency with these agricultural practices and energy production methods will strengthen local economies, make them more resilient, help prevent global conflict, and ease the sense of scarcity and the economic burden increasingly felt by the majority.”

Hannah concluded by saying, “While these changes might seem challenging, we do have the capacity—if we can only galvanize the will. Many communities have already begun implementing some of these solutions. But top-down change is also essential if we are to address the climate crisis with the speed and scale needed. For this to happen, citizens must insist on getting the influence of money out of politics and the legislative process.”

This article appears courtesy of Ecorazzi

Ecorazzi covers news and gossip on celebrities and notables in support of the environment and humanitarian causes. You can follow us on Twitterand Facebook.

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‘Gravity’ Director Alfonso Cuarón Is Yet Another Hollywood Vegetarian

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Image: RavenU

The post Daryl Hannah’s Top 5 Ways To Stop Global Warming appeared first on EcoSalon.

Our lives depend on water, but we’re guzzling much more than our fair share.

Water is essential to every part of our daily lives, whether we are coming into direct contact with the liquid or not. Water is necessary for anything from keeping us hydrated to growing the food we eat and many of the raw materials needed to produce the objects we use. We tend to see water as a readily available substance that appears when we turn on the tap, not realizing how every single choice we make affects the world’s constantly declining supply of water. We are currently using up so much of the world’s water that it is projected that by 2030 water demand will exceed supply by 40 percent. That’s only 17 years away – what will we do?

It takes up to 2,000 gallons of water a day to sustain the lifestyle of an average U.S. citizen, and according to water expert Sandra Postel, more than half of it goes into our diet. A single pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water while 132 gallons of water are required for a pound of wheat and 119 gallons for a pound of potatoes. Beverages also have highly varying water footprints, as 1 gallon of coffee requires 880 gallon of water, while 1 gallon of tea requires 128 gallons of water and a gallon of wine requires 1,008 gallons of water. We can obviously make wiser dietary choices when it comes to our water footprint by choosing lower impact foods. But it seems that most of the country has been slow to do so, seeing as we consumed more than 52 billion pounds of meat in 2012 for example.

Global agricultural production alone accounts for 92 percent of the total water footprint, but food crops make-up only part of the equation. Textiles, biofuels, paper, fiber composites, coal and oil all require water use. We use these resources all the time, but not many of us consider that more than 700 gallons of water were used to produce just one of our many cotton t-shirts or that more than 13 gallons are necessary for five sheets of paper.

One of the main reasons our society does not understand the true value of water is our disconnection from the origin of our products and their supply chains. Most of the water use for the products we consume occurs far away from our daily lives as several large companies have outsourced their production to countries where water is over-exploited and valued at lower prices. Half of China’s industrial production and 40 percent of its agricultural activity occurs in the country’s driest regions despite extremely high risk of damage to long-term water supplies. The ‘Made in China’ label can means much more than possible labor exploitation, poor working conditions and cheap materials – it also demonstrates how the largest water footprint of the USA lies in the Yangtze River basin.

Fresh drinking water is another issue that many of us in first-world countries don’t really have to consider, as we can easily get it from our filtered tap or buy it from the store. Although 70 percent of the Earth is covered by water, most of it is saline and ocean-based. Only 2.5 of the world’s water is fresh, with only 1 percent of it accessible, as the rest is trapped in glaciers and snowfields. Water scarcity already affects 2.7 billion people every year, but the amount of people facing that problem is set to grow. It’s estimated that by 2025 two-thirds of the world’s population will live in water-stressed or water scarce regions.

So what can you do to make a difference? The first step is to educate yourself, and understand the water footprints of the different products you buy, and find possible alternatives. Our choices as consumers make a significant difference to the way businesses operate worldwide. National Geographic has created an online platform that allows you to compare the water footprints of different agricultural crops and gives tips on how to conserve water on a daily basis. Educating yourself on greywater systems and how to effectively implement them in your toilet or irrigation makes an immense difference. You can also ask businesses and municipalities to adopt sensible water recycling schemes by writing to them, so make your voice heard. We are already in the middle of a water crisis, it just hasn’t become as pertinent in the lives of those who still have access to clean water. Let’s realize it by becoming aware and active in curbing the effects while we still can – every drop counts.

Image: likeablerodent

The post H2O Footprint: Do We Really Know How Much Our Drinking Water is Worth? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Instead of energy, the next century’s wars will likely be fought over access to water. Here are three strategies that could ward off the coming global water crisis.

More than 750 million people around the world already lack access to clean drinking water. Although Planet Earth is home to a lot of fresh water, it isn’t evenly distributed. While people in countries like the U.S. use fresh water to flush the toilet and water their inedible lawns, those in other nations must walk miles to draw water from rivers and lakes that are often contaminated.

Human-accelerated climate change has only compounded the existing problem by making drought, flood, and extreme heat the norm. As weather patterns change, regions that relied on heavy snow pack to replenish fresh water reservoirs are seeing resources dwindle. Assuming we can’t stop the effects of climate change, it’s time for humanity to find another way to quench its thirst…and fast. Here are a few of the most promising ideas in the works.

1. Conservation

The easiest and most obvious way to avoid a water crisis is to stop wasting what little we have left. The world’s population is growing by about 80 million people a year, implying increased freshwater demand of about 64 billion cubic meters a year. Unfortunately most of what we use, especially in the developed world, is wasted. Inefficient appliances like faucets, dishwashers, washing machines,  toilets, and sprinklers sends perfectly good water down the drain for no reason. Self-conservation is effective, but most of us struggle to be consistent. Upgrading to WaterSense labeled appliances makes it easy to conserve automatically without sacrificing convenience or water pressure.

2. Desalination

Like stranded sailors when the water bottle runs dry, many have started to eyeball the ocean as a potential source of drinking water. As it is, the high salt content of ocean water would kill us, but what if there were a way to remove the salt while leaving the water behind? This is the goal of the growing desalination industry.

As I wrote recently for EarthTechling, desalination technology, once considered far too costly and time-consuming, has made incredible advances over the past few years. Israel’s Water Authority has been able to reduce the amount of water pumped from the nation’s main source, the Sea of Galilee, by more than half due to above- average rain and higher use of desalination plants.

The Victorian Desalination Plant, located on Australia’s Bass Coast, is a rainfall-independent source of water capable of supplying up to 150 billion liters a year. Recently, solar and even wind-powered desalination processes have crept onto the scene, offering a low impact way to turn brine into drinking water.

3. Recycling

It’s easy to recycle cans and cardboard, but what about water? Before you get too grossed out, it’s important to mention that there are several different types of waste water, and just as many different ways to recycle it. Greywater is household wastewater from sinks, showers, tubs and washing machines that has never come into contact with feces or passed through a toilet. Black water is sewage and much more difficult to recycle properly (although it can be done).

Water recycling at home can be as simple as using a bucket to prevent greywater from escaping down the drain during your shower. There are also in-home recycling systems that can automatically repurpose water from sinks to flush the toilet or water the lawn. In countries like India, where water shortages are already pretty bad, water recycling has become mandatory.

Image: Bert Kaufmann

The post The Coming Global Water Crisis And 3 Ways To Deal With It appeared first on EcoSalon.

InterviewAlexandra Cousteau talks about how water cycles and life cycles are intrinsically connected.

Granddaughter of famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, Alexandra Cousteau has followed her heart’s calling by educating the world on the value of water systems and the significance of their protection and management. Her organization, Blue Legacy, has traveled the world to investigate various water crises and watersheds, aiming to create public consciousness on a resource that is necessary for the survival of all.

Having recently teamed up with ColorZen to promote their revolutionary dyeing process, Alexandra has found a new angle towards approaching education on water issues. As the textile industry is one of the major polluters of waterways, and fashion has a tremendous impact on the way we consume textiles, she believes that understanding and supporting technologies like ColorZen are key to solving many problems. EcoSalon caught up with Alexandra to hear about what she’s been up to lately and discuss her views on how our society needs to better understand water.

Why do you think our society has become so disconnected from water as an essential element and that we are ruining it?

In my experience most people in the U.S., Europe and Australia have clean and safe water that comes from the tap. They don’t need to think about it, it’s just there. They start to think about it when there are disastrous events like Katrina or the drought from this summer, but we haven’t been able to shake conversation around public consciousness on water.

We have a myth of abundance in North America where people think that no matter what happens, we have the technology to fix it and we’ll always have enough clean and safe drinking water no matter how much we keep flushing it down the drain. In a time of increasingly fluctuating climates we are fragmenting and degrading watersheds we depend on, as their quality is deteriorating and the quantity is completely unpredictable. This summer’s drought was a wake up call but we seem to have these wake up calls again and again and still fail to shape the policy on how we manage water.

People should understand where their water comes from, what it takes to get to their home, what happens to it as it flows through their community and where it goes when it leaves. Most people don’t know what a watershed is let alone what watershed they live in, its problems or any ways to solve them. People need to understand that the global water crisis isn’t happening only in Africa, it’s also happening in their communities and in their own backyards. There are very important ways for people to be part of protecting that resource and I think it starts from knowing where your water comes from. Knowing what watershed you live in, what protects the quality and quantity of water you depend on and how can you help be part of the solution. When people start thinking about water in that way I think we’ll see a big change in how we manage a scarce resource.

What kinds of projects have you been working on in order to bring people closer to an understanding of what a watershed is?

My organization Blue Legacy tells stories through expedition, film, advocacy, and education explaining how we live in a particular watershed, but all of our water is connected. We had a global expedition in 2009 where we traveled to Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Australia and the United States producing online media so people could follow along and explore these places with us.

In 2010 we traveled across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico looking at water crises. The Colorado River doesn’t reach the sea any more – it’s a 1200 mile river going through many states and supporting cities, agriculture, the environment, several industries and we use it up. We went to the Gulf of Mexico to study the aftermath of the oil spill, to the southeast where over 60% of our lakes, rivers and streams are too polluted to fish, drink or swim in, and up through the Great Lakes and to Canada. In this country we are still debating whether or not climate change is even happening, so we still have a long way to go in getting everyone on the same page about what the issues are and how we’re going to be able to solve them.

We are continuing our exploration of water issues in North America through a series of expeditions in 2013. We have several briefing events on Capitol Hill in September discussing the issues of water in this country. The water report that the Intelligence Community released recently and the Clean Water Act must really be understood so that we can make better decisions. We’re working closely with a whole network of water conservation organizations by making our film and photography available to them and I speak about these issues to thousands of people.

Tell me a bit about how you teamed up with Michael Harari and ColorZen LLC.

Color Zen contacted me, I learned about their technology and they invited me to help talk about what they are doing. It seemed like an important thing as my focus is on water resources and protecting the quality and quantity of water that our communities need to thrive.

There are over 70 different toxic chemicals involved in textile dyeing that are constantly being released into the environment and 30 or more of those chemicals can never be removed once they are in the water. Water isn’t just local, it moves around the world constantly. Water is something that we all share, so what is going into the water in China or India is ending up in the water that we’re drinking. The very nature of water makes these issues relevant to everybody, not just the countries where the dyeing takes place. When technologies like ColorZen come along, supporting, requesting and demanding that technology is part of ensuring our watershed health and that our choices don’t have a negative impact on the water we all share.

Did you have any experience with the textile industry before you got involved with ColorZen?

I knew about the general issues, but I certainly didn’t know the specifics of dyeing cotton as I do now. I found it quite shocking and that made the solution ColorZen offered exciting.

Have you looked into the effects of textile dyeing further now that you know more about it?

I’m certainly still no expert but I have done my research. It’s clearly something that needs to change and to my understanding this industry wants to change and so I’m hoping that we’ll adopt the new technology.We often think that switching to an environmentally friendly technology or behavior will cost more, which has definitely been one of the biggest barriers to change and action. That doesn’t seem to be the case with ColorZen and there are a lot of benefits to all parties in the production chain as well as to the communities where color dyeing is a source of revenue and an important part of the economy, as they don’t have to compromise or suffer the health impacts any more.

Which bodies of water are most affected by textile dyeing?

Typically it’s the rivers and streams where textile dyeing is most intensive, mainly China and Southern India. The rivers in these areas are heavily impacted, to the point where you can see them run pink, green, yellow or blue based on what the fashionable color is in New York or Paris.

Would you say apparel/textile companies are truly taking into account the necessity of water conservation?

I know it’s a concern for brands and textile manufacturers. Technology is the solution in many respects and providing people with the clothing they desire and need without destroying the environment in which the production takes place requires investment in research and development. ColorZen is certainly at the forefront of that.

Who do you think has the most power in this situation – consumers, producers or policy makers?

Consumers – we all need to be mindful of the choices we make in the products we buy and what we put on our bodies. Would you rather buy a t-shirt that is organic cotton and was dyed without the use of toxic chemicals, or would you rather buy a t-shirt that’s full of toxins, not only in the fabric but also in the land and water that was used to create it? I think that people would prefer the organic shirt, especially if there is not a big difference in price. We think it’s great if the cotton is organic but we neglect to think about the toxic dyeing process that the organic cotton went through. I think we need to expand organic cotton production to how we dye cotton so that we can make it a healthier process from beginning to end.

If global communities don’t protect the resources they have and don’t learn how to manage them sustainably into the future, they’re going to lose them. A good example of that is the Guatemala-Beliz border, which is completely discernible from an airplane because Beliz is covered in rainforests but Guatemala is a desert. All of Central America used to be a big rainforest but the Guatemalans deforested practically the entire country, whereas the Belizians maintained their forests and watersheds. One side is very poor and the other thrives with an abundance of natural resources and better quality of life.

We need to be mindful of the resources our community has, no matter where live, and manage them for the future and not make poor decisions. Those decisions end up living with us for a long time and it’s hard to turn back the clock and re-plant a rainforest or purify a river that’s been polluted by toxic chemicals.

The post Interview: Alexandra Cousteau On The Water We All Share appeared first on EcoSalon.

The best of the week at EcoSalon, hand-picked for your clicking pleasure.

Think river towns are on the wane? You could be right – but only in the popular media. With their new competition and partnership with American Rivers, Outside magazine wants to remind people that river towns haven’t gone anywhere, and they’re just as charming (and environmentally conscious) as ever.

Mark Twain is credited as saying golf is “a good walk spoiled.” In fact he probably didn’t say it at all, but for critics of the sport, it has remained a rallying cry. How many of them have the environmental cost uppermost in their minds? As Allison Ford discovers, golf remains a water-guzzling monster, and it’s getting thirstier each year…

Anyone who is anyone has an embarrassing pair of flares in the closet, kept for sentimental value but utterly unsuitable for the light of day. But lo! Are they due for a comeback, as this history of flared pants gently suggests? Should I jump the fashion gun and strut proudly down the street in those tan bell-bottoms that lurk in my wardrobe? Will I? Not a chance.

Lazy, warm evenings are upon us, complete with the tantalizing smells coming from next door’s barbecue. So fight back! Practice your July 4th outdoor entertaining skills with these 11 essentials for a bash to drive your neighbours crazy.

Finally, know the name Natalie Coughlin? Yes, she was the swimmer decorated so handsomely with medals at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. What you might not know is that’s she’s a keen urban farmer – check out our interview with her on the subject.

The post The Friday 5: Out & About Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

The best of EcoSalon’s stories this week.

Salt is itself an uncomplicated compound – it’s how we use it that’s so fascinating. Take these staggeringly intricate installations by artist Motio Yamamoto.

Similarly, from simple grapes come extraordinarily diverse wines, and not just in Europe – check out these 10 Californian wineries leading the way in producing new wine the traditional French way, without synthetic fungicides, herbicides or fertilizers.

Planning to put up new shelving and loathe the idea of spending cash on it? Take a look at this post for inspiration, then go hunting around your house for anything suitable. (We’re betting you’ll find it).

Think the answer to water shortages is cutting back on the water you use? As Allison Ford explains here, you’d serve your country better by turning lights off and eating locally-sourced food.

Finally, butter pasty, almond filling and icing – that’s how you make the Swedish pastry classics called Mazariner. Piece of cake. (And are they healthy? They are if you eat very small amounts of them. Yes).

The post The Friday 5: Simple Ideas for Big Change Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

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1. Dating back as far back as 2006, several states have reported water shortages near water-bottling plants across the nation – including Florida, New Hampshire, Texas, and Wisconsin. Any chance the underground water situation has improved over the past four or five years? Not likely.

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2. Less than one percent of all the world’s fresh water is available for human use in the form of lakes, underground sources, and reservoirs. The rest is soaked into the soil, too deep underground to reach, or manifests itself in the icecaps of the world’s polar regions.

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3. Props to the folks that spend a long time tracking down clothes that are manufactured responsibly, but don’t forget that much of the environmental damage occurs after you’ve bought that gorgeous new dress. Between thirsty washing machines and the half-loads we throw in when we’re pressed for time, we send gallons of wash water down the drain every time we run the spin cycle. Let’s face it, none of us have time to scrub our clothes on a rock over a rain puddle, but do take a few steps to reduce the amount of water you use washing your clothes.

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4. It may seem like there’s a new cure for whatever ails you but, in the end, water really is your BFF when it comes to battling everything from puffy eyes and insomnia to hangovers and candy overload.

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5. Reports estimate the average person uses around 160 gallons of water per day. Where does it all go? Two-thirds literally gets flushed away, set aside two gallons if you leave the faucet running while you brush your teeth, and another 55 gallons for that 10-minute shower.

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6. For a mere 20 bucks, you can join Charity Water in building the infrastructure necessary for clean water in developing nations where people often have to walk miles just to dip drinking sludge from a polluted swamp.

Now that you’re filled with information about water that you didn’t have 10 minutes ago, what are you going to do with your new-found knowledge? Pay attention to the way you use water and figure out where to cut back, even if you just shorten your shower by 60 seconds, or give your plants a drink with the water you just used to wash your lettuce.

Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year’s topic is water.

Images: FreeWine, mandiberg, reurinkjan, Shandi-lee, Conor Lawless, jeckert gwapo, Charity Water

The post 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Water appeared first on EcoSalon.