That's 82 gallons per day. Or 372 liters. Quite a lot.

A standard (inefficient) US toilet uses 1.28 gallons every time you flush it. Lets assume you have four people per household maybe using the toilet about 6 times per day, each. That's almost 30 gallons right there. The average shower takes about 15 gallons. So times four that's 60 gallons right there. Adds up to 80 gallons already. That's before you turn on the washing machine, the dishwasher, watering the lawn, making tea, etc. 82 sounds about right but also very wasteful.

The question of course is could the US do better? And why would it? As it turns out, a lot of places treat water like an almost free commodity. Hence the complete disregard for toilet and shower inefficiencies. If people would pay for it by the gallon at a reasonable amount, they'd fix it. But they aren't.

Say you'd price it a 10 cents per gallon. A 15 gallon shower now costs you 1.50$. Maybe you'd install some water saving shower head and shower bit less long. The actual price is closer to a 1000 gallons for that price. Hence the average American not giving a shit when they flush the toilet, take a shower, etc.

Water isn't cheap to source anymore. Especially if you live in a desert. Taking water from unsustainable sources has the downside that those sources run out eventually. Especially if they are not being replenished naturally anymore. That's what is happening in a lot of places. Water isn't scarce though. Our planet is covered in it. All we need to do is separate it from salt (and our waste) and we can have as much as we want of it. But it comes at a price.

I checked our water bill yesterday (Los Angeles), and found we average well over 82 gallons a day. I'm trying to figure out why. Household of 3, no lawns, lots of succulents (a couple fruit trees but we're not crazy about watering). So our water use is largely: daily shower, dishwasher, toilet, sink, washing machine, and reverse osmosis water faucet. We had a crappy tankless water heater for a few years, so I actually removed the water saving shower faucets and sink aerators. I got a new tankless, so now I want to put back on the water saving faucets and see how that impacts results.

But... I was surprised. I could definitely shorten my showers.

Reverse osmosis throws a lot of water down the drain to keep the filters from clogging. I'm just an hour or so south of you and get the water doesn't taste incredible out of the sink, but I got a Pur countertop water filter which gets the chalky taste out without wasting any water, might be worth a try? Reverse osmosis is pretty intense if your water coming out of the pipe is treated, it's better suited for people with totally untreated water IMO

My guess would be that the RO filter is dumping a bunch. They seem to use 4 gallons for every 1 gallon of filtered water [1]. I personally do't like RO water, it tastes off to me and I appreciate having a. little fluoride in my water to fight off tooth decay.

[1]https://americanhomewater.com/the-truth-about-reverse-osmosi...

I lived overseas for a bit somewhere where you have to have an RO filter to drink from the tap. Nearly every filter on the market has mineral restoration packs which I think help with that bland water RO taste. One of the servicemen who changed our filters once warned us that the calcium in our purifier was so low that our bones would lose calcium. While I don’t know if I believe it, it was interesting to learn that minerals in drinking water can benefit health

I kind of miss making coffee with water out of that purifier though, it tasted noticeably better

Like I said, my main concern would be the fluoride. I actually really like the water here in NYC tastes great and seems good for baking, brewing beer, and coffee. Though I've never tried RO coffee.

You could try reading the meter and going without one thing each day - but maybe the reverse osmosis filter flushes itself too often?

How old are your toilets? Old toilets could use as much as 7 gallons per flush 30+ years ago. Modern toilets use 1.6 gpf or less. Swapping out a 3gpf toilet that came with the house for a modern one made a helluva difference in my usage.

Since 32% of all of American water use is irrigation, I'd probably start with improvements and moves towards more drip irrigation. For domestic use, toilets seem to represent ~24% of use, so moving to dual flush toilets could probably make a big dent. Outdoor water use for homes contribute between 30% and 60% depending on region so discouraging green laws in arid regions is probably a good idea, and that seems to be happening.

Compare that to Germany, where the average water consumption per household is 12439 gallons per person per year [1]. Sounds to me like Americans are particularly wasteful with their water consumption.

[1] https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/entwicklung-d... (figure shows liters per day, 129 liters per day are about 12438.5 gallons per year)

Toilets and lawns probably contribute a lot to this difference.