Water Conservation For ages, since the beginning of time, humans have explored numerous ways in which we can harness water. The great Egyptian Civilization who depended fully on the Nile as a water resource, and the Romans who were the first to build huge aquifers in order to store and transport water to citizens. Today, technology has developed in a way that allows virtually anyone in the world to readily obtain water. In the United States, a developed country, clean, consumable water is made readily available to many people. However, this is not the case for many developing countries, who struggle simply to gain access to clean water. About “2.5 billion people, in the world, live without proper sanitation” and about “768 million people do not have access to safe, clean drinking water.(1)” These circumstances lead to unavoidable hardships, and leads to the death of 1,400 children globally, every day, simply from “ diseases directly linked to unsafe water or a lack of basic sanitation facilities.(1)” In today’s society, however, water is often taken for granted and consequently has led to increased water use by many individuals. In Texas, specifically, reservoirs continue to decrease year after year, and has been estimated that about 3% of Texas reservoirs have been used in the past year, decreasing from 67% full to 64% full(4). A viable cause of the increased water use in Texas, can be attributed to many things. Population growth, a changing climate and recurring drought are all viable explanations for increased water use, but, however, cannot be directly affected by human actions. One action, however, that can be changed directly with human action is the concept of conservation. Many solutions are available for the conservation of water, but only one stands out as a truly beneficial action of conservation, water recycling.
Water recycling is defined as the