Don’t Take Water for Granted! Check for Leaks to Save Money and the Planet

By 2025, it is projected that 50% of the world’s population will live in water-stressed areas due to climate change according to Water.org.

The impact of the global water crisis is already hurting millions, with 771 million lacking access to safe water and 1.7 billion lacking access to hygienic sanitation. This results in 1 million people dying yearly due to illnesses that are related to water, hygiene, and sanitation.

What’s even more tragic is the fact that this crisis especially affects women and children.

Every 2 minutes, a child dies due to water-related disease, with diarrhea being the 3rd leading cause of child death worldwide. In impoverished regions, children are also often tasked with collecting water, which takes away hours from their lives that should have been devoted to education and play.

Women also suffer terribly. Tasked with finding and collecting water for their families, women and girls spend hours every day to fulfill this responsibility. Hours that could have been devoted to caring for their loved ones, schooling, earning a living, and other activities to improve their family’s quality of life.

With the worsening effects of climate change, such as severe and prolonged droughts, more destructive cyclones, deadlier heat waves, devastating floods, and rising sea levels, access to safe water is becoming more and more scarce.

It is just timely that this post from Reddit’s LifeProTips reminds everyone once again about the importance of checking for water leaks. Not only for saving money, but we should also think of every drop that gets wasted and what it would mean to someone who doesn’t have clean water.

According to u/upsetti_regretti, “Once a week (at least every month), make sure all faucets are turned off and appliances like dishwashers and washing machines aren’t running. Then check your water meter to see if it’s running. If it’s still running, you have a leak somewhere. Do this regularly to prevent a huge water bill because of a leak. A friend of mine recently used over 1200m3 of water in a year, instead of the usual 50m3, all because of the leak; since it was after the mains connection, it was the responsibility of the homeowner to check this, not the water supplier; he had to pay for all of it. Especially in/after winter: water expands when it freezes, so when the water inside a pipe expands too much, a pipe can break. You’ll only notice this after the water in that pipe thaws again.”

Yes, it can be such a headache to pay bills for wasted water. But it’s also wise to think of saving water the best way we can, because it’s not a limitless resource.