Summary of my Findings

In one day I use a total of 451 gallons. I use 13,530 gallons per month, and 162,360
gallons per year. The majority of personal water that I used was for showering. I think this was
the majority because I spend a lot of time everyday in the shower. The minority of water that I
used personally was for my water bottle. I think this was the minority because I only fill up my
water bottle twice a day and I use less than 2 gallons every day for it. The average american
uses 176 gallons of water everyday. This means that I use 275 gallons more than the average
american daily. I think that my number of gallons is so high because of my showers. I use a total
of 315 gallons everyday in the shower. I think that this factor is one that accounts for the
difference between my daily usage and the average american daily usage.

Next Steps, Implications for the Future

Of the water that I consume I can probably conserve about 226 gallons of it. I could do
this by taking 20 minute showers instead of 45 minutes. I could also only use my sprinklers 1
time a week instead of 2. So instead of me using 102 gallons personally per week for the
sprinklers, I could use 51. I could reduce my daily gallon usage to 224 gallons per day instead
of 451. Of these strategies that I could use to potentially conserve water, I think that taking
shorter showers would be easy to implement. This is because I could hurry up my process and
not waste time in the shower. It might be difficult to implement only using the sprinklers once a
week instead of twice because they are already programmed to go off twice a week, and the
plants need water to survive.

Conclusions and Takeaways

As I talked to other people In my class I noticed that my usage was a little bit higher than
theirs, so I guess from a local perspective my water usage is acceptable. My water usage was a
lot higher than the average american’s, so my usage is probably not very acceptable from a
regional perspective. Compared to the average African family that uses 5 gallons of water each
day, I use about 90 times what a whole family uses. This is not acceptable, even from a global
perspective. The impact of my current usage is that I am wasting water, when someone who
really needs it could use the water that I waste everyday. If I made changes to how much water
I used, it could impact my community by conserving water in case of a drought. The relevance
that this personal water audit has on a local community, is that if I use too much of the warm
water for my showers, then someone else in my family might not have warm water for their
shower. In my regional community, Texas, my personal water audit is relevant because since it
is very hot in Texas we experience all lot of droughts, so if I can conserve water then there will
be more water to water the plants that are drying up. The relevance that my water audit has in a
global community is that if I don’t waste as much water, then there could be more clean water
for children in Africa who don’t have access to clean water. In conclusion, if I implemented no
changes to my daily water usage, then my local, regional, and global communities would not
have as much water for uses that are way more important than mine. I would be impacting my
family, the state of Texas, and of course, the thirsty children in Africa.