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.