What's meaningfully wasteful depends entirely where and when you are, and how plentiful water is locally at the moment.

I don't think so. Just because you're not in a water-stressed place doesn't make you eligible to keep taps open 24/7.

This mentality is what brought us to today.

Who is 'us' and what do you mean by 'today'? And what do you mean by 'eligible'?

In most places I've been to, you just pay your water bill, and then you can leave your taps running.

It's about as productive as buying bread just to toss it in the trash, of course.

us: the humanity in general, today: the state of world water stress level [0], [1], eligible: the correctness of the thing you are doing regardless of the legality of the thing you're doing.

IOW, "I pay the bill, now get off my lawn" is something you can do. But should you really do it, just because you can do it?

[0]: https://www.wri.org/data/water-stress-country (This is decade old, we're worse now)

[1]: https://riskfilter.org/water/explore/map

If you think you can do whatever you want regardless of the things you're causing, then we're on a completely different page, and continuing this little chat has no point. We can't converge and agree on a point.

How would conserving water in, say, Germany help with water stress in Australia?

Of course it does.

The Great Lakes have 1/5th of the world's freshwater. Absolutely enormous volumes of that water run out the St. Lawrence into the sea, continually, all the time.

I don't have any reason to leave my taps open all the time, and my water is metered so I would pay for such profligacy in money I could put to some useful purpose.

But I can certainly do it without creating any meaningful environmental stress. This would just briefly divert it from its destiny in the Atlantic.

Just because you live near a lucky point on earth, thinking that everyone has the same luxury is a bit absurd.

I traveled through Mongolia for a week. Every camp we stayed had a water tank, and water use was extremely constrained. Same for electricity and heat.

Your position is akin to getting power from the first distribution point near a nuclear power plant and saying that electricity is indeed infinite for everyone on the planet.

Just because you don't prepay (but pay as you go) for fresh water doesn't mean that everyone has that luxury. I have shared a couple of maps down there. Maybe you should give them a look about our planet's state.

They didn't say anything about thinking that everyone has the same luxury.

How does diverting an infinitesimal fraction of the water flowing from the Great Lakes affect the water supply at a camp in Mongolia?

> Just because you don't prepay (but pay as you go) for fresh water doesn't mean that everyone has that luxury.

If my local water supplier would offer the option to pre-pay, I might take it. I don't think it would change anything about how I use my water, if the price stayed the same.

(I am pre-paying for my mobile broadband, and I don't notice me using it any different than people who post-pay.)

I think most people take showers but most people don't irrigate their fields.

Most people consume produce from irrigated fields. So it depends on how you want to allocate the consumption: to farmers or consumers? (It's just an accounting question.)

I'm convinced there's a pareto distribution of crop water usage. We're depleting our aquifers to grow sileage crops and almonds (which aren't even that good).

Different things happen in different parts of the globe, and water is a fairly local issue.

You are right that me consuming almonds in Singapore can indirectly cause trouble in California, where they grow the almonds. But the well-known solution to that is proper water rights trading, like they do in Australia in water challenged areas.

A nominal water aerator limits water around 5L-6L/min levels. For every minute I don't use the water, I spend approximately two full kettles of water.

With every 5L of water I can

    - Cook 4 servings (~400 grams) of pasta.
    - Brew 5L of tea/coffee
    - Water all the plants at home two times.
    - Possibly wash most of my handwash-only dishes in one go.
    - etc.

So it's not not meaningfully wasteful. However, I can't turn off the water in the winter, because I feel very cold otherwise. However, this doesn't mean I don't waste any water or happy about what I'm doing. My only (half) relief is this water is somehow processed and reused by city for other needs, at least one more time.

Well, even if the city doesn't re-use the water, it doesn't just disappear.

Yeah, but getting rid of chemicals and returning it to a non-poisonous state for the nature is a big plus.

You can't dump everything to the soil and say "that's your problem now, nature. Cope!".

Yes, I mean when you are 'wasting water' you are mostly wasting the effort it takes to clean the water. Not the water itself.

As opposed to eg 'wasting petrol', where the petrol really is gone afterwards. At least it has been chemically transformed.

> You can't dump everything to the soil and say "that's your problem now, nature. Cope!".

Nature couldn't care less. Nature works on much larger timescales than humans. It's the humans that are impacted.

Just like climate change, plastic, and all other environmental issues -- humans are paying (or will pay) the price, not nature.

It depends on what you mean by 'nature'. On a large enough scale, 'nature' doesn't care whether earth is hit by a moon sized asteroid, either.

I think we’re in agreement :)

Assuming you use the same amount of soap and what nots, and get the same amount of dirt and debris off your body, the more water you use during a shower, the easier it is to process the water at your sewage treatment plant, if your waste water is treated.

If your waste water isn't treated, and is discharged to water ways as-is, the more water you use, the more dilute your pollution.

If you've got a septic system, I dunno? Probably doesn't help, but if your system is well sized, no big deal? Some of your outflow probably recharges aquifers, so it's kind of circular (although a lot of the outflow evaporates, so less directly circular there)

> [...] the easier it is to process the water at your sewage treatment plant, if your waste water is treated.

It's easier to process per litre, but it is easier to process in absolute numbers?

Part of processing is often adding clean water; to the extent that you've already done it upstream, the treatment plant can add less.

Maybe. Though when you add clean water upstream that usually means water clean enough to be fit for drinking (because that what comes out of your tap.)

When they dilute at the treatment plant, they can use somewhat dirtier clean water.

The water is cheap and plentiful, what's wasteful is heating the water and throwing that away.

The maps, surveys and projections say otherwise, but of course you're free to believe what you believe.

That's the thing, dollars are usually a better indicator, unless something somewhere is burning money to prevent prices from reflecting real scarcity.

We're drinking one of the cheapest drinking water in the world, but this doesn't change the reality of sinkholes appearing where we deplete the water in our country.

So, the prices might not be rising that quickly for now, but sinkholes are giving us the warning.

Prices don't always point correctly, esp. when there are other economic and socioeconomic factors at play.

If you live in Minnesota, sure. Not as true in Australia.

Water is by far the most abundant resource on the planet (70+% of earth is water), and we have methods to remove salt and contaminants from almost all of it. We can even turn urine into drinking water.

I wouldn’t worry about wasting it. We’ll die from something else long before water becomes an issue.

The amount, abundance and share of water among everything on this planet doesn't mean anything if none of it is in that dam nearby your city and you can't utilize it.

Similarly, that spring water has no use if you can't extract it and get out from the hands of capitalistic companies (cough Nestlé & CocaCola cough) which monopolize said spring and suck it dry without giving it to you.

Don't forget, Nestlé's CEO told that "water is something they package and sell, and that water is not a human right". So don't expect it to get that abundant resource and use it the way you wish.

So, water is precious. You need to be mindful about it.

Water already is an issue in many places. It's expensive and in limited supply because we can't drink salt water and storage, treatment and delivery cost money.

For the US in particular, water issues come down overwhelmingly to unfettered agricultural use, often with crops like alfalfa that are both mostly water by weight and are shipped out of the country to other places. Domestic use is only a fraction of the total.

I am pretty sure that this is true in all developed countries. When you see farming without irrigation, you will see more poverty. It is very important for human development. That said, it could sometimes be done more efficiently, but more costly.

And in some other places it's so abundant that water companies don't even bother metering it, you just pay one flat fee a month and you can use as much as you like.

Currently, my waste water goes right back into the Mississippi. Fresh water galore. That's not the case on the west coast. Residential (lawns aside) isn't a drop in the bucket compared to agriculture though.

70% of the surface of the Earth is covered by water. That turns out to mean little. Have you seen this?

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/all-earths-water-a-single-...

The issue in cities where most people live is only sometimes about the actual quantity of water available, but the cost and capacity of infrastructure to collect, treat, and distribute the water.

Was that about water, or about energy spent on heating the water? My gut feeling is that keeping the water running would roughly double the amount of water, so double the energy.

Yes, unless you take cold showers.

Link?