Bibliography

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/environment/water-consumption.aspx
The Conference Board of Canada website


http://www.elcowater.org/
The Elco Water website


www.ga.water.usgs.gov/edu
The Science for Schools website


http://www.water%20green%20venture.ca/
The Wise Water Use website


http://whyfiles.org/131fresh_water/2.html
The Water Woes website.

McGuinty Wants Ontario to Export Water Technology, not Water

Here is a link to an article about McGuinty recently anouncing a new program that Ontario is launching. He is also anounced a new legislation that it is illegal to sell Ontario's water. Click on the link to read the article: http://www.ctv.ca/sevlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100518/ontaerio-water-bill-100518/20100518

How to Conserve Water in your Home

Here is a video about appliances and ways to save water in your home. Click on the link below to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MDLpVHY8LE

Think Globally, Act Locally

Industry is the biggest consumer of water in Canada. It is hard for the individual person to try to fix this, but if a large group of people protested this, these companies would get pressure from the government to change their ways, and hopefully, they would. It is also very hard to control a rapidly growing population. However, we can control how much water that evergrowing population uses. Luckily, there are many ways in which an individual person can do this. The hard part is to get everyone to conserve water in these small ways. It might mean changing part of your daily routine but it will be worth it in the long run.

More and more, consumers are buying low flow appliances. In certain provinces, it is now the law when installing a new water-using appliance, it must be a low flow appliance. This is a good place to start. Humans can also contribute to this effort by doing simple things. For example, don't leave the water running when you are washing your face and brushing your teeth, don't take long showers, make sure there are no leaks in your home, and don't flush the toilet unnecessarily. These are only a few of the things you can do. Here is a link to 45 other tips for conserving water: http://www.americanwater.com/49ways.php.

Imagine if everyone with a low flow sink conciously made an effort to use less water everyday and tried to take shorter showers. This would have a large impact on that household's water consumption! Now imagine if an entire street did that, an entire block, city, province or nation! This can become a reality if everyone changes their attitude. I think that a lot of people believe that this problem is too large for anyone to do anything about. However, if we can help change the attitude of an entire population to "We can do something about this", we could save millions of litres of water. Canada is currently ranked 15 on the world water consumption list. Nowhere is the phrase "Think globally, act locally" more appropriate than in regards to our most precious natural resource. It is the thinking and the actions of every individual that count.

Good Transparency:Water Conservation

This is a video about saving water and how little things you do in your day can make a very big difference. Click on the link to watch the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOLf2RbxmzE

The Need for Sustainability

The basic definition of sustainability is to be able to use the resources that we have available to us today, while conserving enough for future generations. Currently we are not doing this with water. Many people think there is plenty of water on earth (we have 5 oceans don't we?) . However, not all of this water is usable. Humans can only drink fresh water, and while we do have the technology to convert this salt water into fresh water, this will use energy and release more harmful emissions into the atmosphere. This fresh water could potentially run out, and if this happens the consequences would be dire.

This problem is very large because it is hard to get everyone to reduce their water usage. People who live in poor, third world countries do not use as much water as we do in North America. If every household in North America reduced their water consumption to 2/3 of what it is now, that would be a hugely positive impact. The need for education about sustainable water practices is essential to this movement. If children are brought up to use less water, then they will continue to do so for their entire lives. Unfortunately, my generation will possibly have to deal with the consequences of wasting water. It is my hope that the people of my generation teach their kids water conserving habits so that maybe their generation won't have water shortages.