> One of those "Did You Know...?" things in a local freebie publication reads as follows:
>
> "Canadians are a wasteful lot. A family of four sends an average of 338 gallons of sewage down the drain every day. Over the course of a year, that would fill seven in-ground swimming pools. Ninety percent of the sewage is water, says the Canadian Water and Wastewater Assocation."
>
> Despite the ambiguous source credit, I have to doubt that this is true. 338 gallons?? Four showers, twelve flushes, one load of dishes, and one load of laundry surely wouldn't reach half this amount, would it, and where would the second half come from?
>
> My theory is that this is about a particular Canadian family of four with unusually leaky faucets.
>

First off, my apologies on behalf of all Canadians.

I did some quick googling, and I found a similar (but lower) estimate of water consumption for Americans. Not counting lawn and gardening use, the average American uses 69.3 gallons. More interestingly, that consumption is broken down as follows:

Toilet: 18.5 gal
Washing machine: 15 gal
Shower: 11.6 gal
Faucet: 10.9 gal
Leaks (presumably distinct from "Toilet"): 9.5 gal
Other: 1.6 gal
Bathtub: 1.2 gal (Obviously we take many more showers than baths)
Dishwasher: 1 gal

Perhaps the most striking entry there is "Faucet". Many of us leave the water running while we brush our teeth, while scrubbing dishes, and during other activities that don't actually require running water. An interesting experiment would be to leave a large bucket of known volume under your bathroom sink, disconnect the pipe so that the sink drains directly into the bucket, and see how long it takes for normal usage to fill the bucket completely. That's where 16% of our water is used.

Also, I've heard that in Montreal our water pipes are so old that about half our water is lost to leaks before it even enters our homes. Maybe that explains why the figures are higher for Canadians.

The really sad thing is that all the water that goes down our drains is of the finest drinkable quality - including the water in our toilets (on the way in, anyway). Water is abundant, but drinkable water is not.

^v^:)^v^
FB