A Little Can Save A Lot #2

I'm not sure where my mind is going to go sometimes when I just let it wander but today's post was like a hammer over the head. I previously made a post about the savings in both money and water by cutting our showers a little shorter, Find That Here, and today I find it's another bathroom habit I'm focusing in on.

For those who didn't read my introduction post I am a long haul trucker and live in my truck so by default I spend a lot of time using truck stop bathrooms. Although I've seen some questionable things happening at the sink I've also noticed something too. A lot of guys leave the water running full blast while they are brushing their teeth and it drives me nuts. I know you are going to want to wet the brush before starting and rinse off after but there is no reason to leave it going in between.

Time for the math, hold on tight! From multiple pages online I have found the average bathroom faucet puts out 1.5 - 2 gallons per minute of water, for this example I will use the lower number. Of those people who brush their teeth the recommendation is that you do so for two full minutes but I'm going to err on the side of caution and say it actually lasts a minute and a half. At this point we have an average teeth brusher who doesn't turn off the water wasting three gallons of water each day or 1,095 gallons a year.

Using the last population count in the USA of roughly 320,000,000 people I am cutting 20,000,000 off based on the amount of children under the age of four making an even 300,000,000. According to a 2014 study seven out of ten Americans brush twice per day which brings us down to 210,000,000 twice-a-day brushers. Lets assume that one out of every three people leave the water running (actually I'm going to use 3.5) which leaves us with 60,000,000 people.

Ready for the big numbers? As we have seen already a single person can waste 1,095 gallons of water per year leaving the tap on. If 60,000,000 are doing this every day then they are wasting 180,000,000 gallons per day, 5,400,000,000 in a thirty day month and an unbelievable 65,700,000,000 gallons collectively a year! This is equivalent to 1,200 hours of water falling from Niagra falls.

Its a simple thing and takes virtually no time at all to do. So please twist, turn or push your faucet and lets save a little water. You may be thirsty one day.

First image is from pexels and offered royalty free and the second from pixelbay also royalty free. Post edited to correct some math.