Excessive water consumption bad for environment

Toya2xcel

I drink LARGE amounts of water everyday but not because I am trying to be super healthy. I drink alot of water simply because I LOVE the taste of water, nothing can quench my thirst like water can. I rarely ever drink anything else.(but i have been trying to add in some green tea for health reasons) I will go ahead and apologize to the environment now because I'm not gonna stop drinking large amounts of water or stop flushing my toilet after I pee for the twelfth time today lol

sportybrewerschick

You forgot to calculate the water used to wash one's hands.

My kids will tell you how much they save the environment by skipping both flushing and washing.

haha made me laugh!

toddis

Meh, who cares? The planet will survive long after we're gone. ~pours water in toilet AND flushes~. Too much effort to drink it.

Athena98501

I drink LARGE amounts of water everyday but not because I am trying to be super healthy. I drink alot of water simply because I LOVE the taste of water, nothing can quench my thirst like water can. I rarely ever drink anything else.(but i have been trying to add in some green tea for health reasons) I will go ahead and apologize to the environment now because I'm not gonna stop drinking large amounts of water or stop flushing my toilet after I pee for the twelfth time today lol

QFT. I drink whenever I'm thirsty, and end up with totals between 12-16 the vast majority of the time. I never understand the people who say they can't stand water. I don't have to go more often than every hour or two either, but drinking more, and eliminating whenever possible are both recommended for me as I'm prone to kidney stones and UTIs.

waldo56

Agree with both above that work in the water/wastewater industry.

Water is a renewable resource. The process of treating it does not use that much power, it is primarily a natural process we help speed along. Treatment plants work best with a constant or near constant flow. Letting it sit without flushing is if anything worse; let the pipes start treating it right away.

The public "wasting" water within a residence is a whole lot of ado about nothing. Trying to use less water around the house does virtually nothing for the environment.

Where "wasting" water really matters is watering/irrigation, especially in drought areas. Residential use in the house is almost perfectly volume neutral; what comes in goes out.

kms1320

I drink around 2 gallons a day. I might pee a dozen times during the day at most. I learned in the military that any more than a light shade of yellow means you're dehydrated. We were made to drink LOTS of water, and I like how I feel when I'm saturated with water. I also drink it for appetite suppression. A lot of times when I want a snack, I drink 8-16 oz water and the craving goes away. While there's nothing that says "you must drink X cups a day blah blah" there's nothing that says "drinking X cups a day is bad for you" so I'll keep filling up my ice mountain gallon twice a day.

Who defined "excessive water consumption" btw, and where can I read about that study?

LinaBo

I have seen people on this site who swear by forcing down 20+ cups (that's 160+ ounces) of water a day... and they aren't even the ones who work out aggressively.

Unlike with some people who think hydration is about forcing down copious amounts of water until it's practically coming back up, I drink when I'm thirsty. I didn't always. I used to hate drinking water as a teenager; it was so boring to me. My consumption now usually hits the 8-10 cup mark per day, but sometimes is as low as 5 cups. On workout days, I hit somewhere between 12-16 cups.

Once you get used to drinking water again and recognizing the signs of genuine thirst, you should just drink it instinctively as needed. Other mammals seem to know when their bodies crave water, why do we have to make it so complicated for ourselves?

I live in Texas on a farm. It has been known to be 120 in the field out in full sun. The recommendation for drinking then is one ounce of water per pound of body weight per day. You should take all your electrolytes during that time too. I've noticed when it's that hot that I don't even have to go to the bathroom any more often even if I do drink the recommended amount.

In extreme heat, it makes sense. Your body is sweating like you would if you were working out intensely. I'm not referring to such cases, though; I'm referring to people who chug obscene amounts of water, ignoring their natural thirst, on a daily basis, during pretty unremarkable weather... often as part of a weight loss plan (and, it would seem, something they read or heard supposedly came from the mouth of Dr Oz).

Doodlewhopper

Meh, who cares? The planet will survive long after we're gone. ~pours water in toilet AND flushes~. Too much effort to drink it.

Too damn funny.

Doodlewhopper

I drink LARGE amounts of water everyday but not because I am trying to be super healthy. I drink alot of water simply because I LOVE the taste of water, nothing can quench my thirst like water can. I rarely ever drink anything else.(but i have been trying to add in some green tea for health reasons) I will go ahead and apologize to the environment now because I'm not gonna stop drinking large amounts of water or stop flushing my toilet after I pee for the twelfth time today lol

QFT. I drink whenever I'm thirsty, and end up with totals between 12-16 the vast majority of the time. I never understand the people who say they can't stand water. I don't have to go more often than every hour or two either, but drinking more, and eliminating whenever possible are both recommended for me as I'm prone to kidney stones and UTIs.

My urologist recommends that daily I drink 3 glasses of lemonade (morning, noon, night) to prevent the formation of kidney stones. He said it wont dissolve them, only prevent.

As I dont like sugary drinks, I buy a bottle of lemon juice (it's the citrate) and add just a little with each glass of water. Be careful of your teeth enamel.

cedarghost

I work in water treatment for a living.

Fun facts you may not know about water treatment plants:

The water coming is screened through a filtering system, solids go through a process called dewatering. It's gross, just leave it at that.

The water, non chunky, if you will, goes through aeration, then through a clarification process. The aeration process must have oxygen and bacteria, good bacteria, that can't live without fresh deposits being made to the plant. This is the food for the bacteria. They like the higher pH and the things we leave behind in the water.

These good bacteria thrive in and eat the things we put into the water. The aeration basin process adds in oxygen to the water and drops the pH to environmentally friendly levels. It raises the D.O. Or dissolved oxygen level from near zero to great levels that fish and plants love when it gets done.

Once this goes through all 6 rings of the basin it goes to the clarifiers, the clarifiers settle any solids out of the water either through gravity or chemical polymers. The sludge left over goes through more aeration, and Ultraviolet decontamination, a lot of the sludge is good bacteria that have died off, this then goes to lagoons to dry out and eventually be sold for crop fertilization.

This good water that is left leaves the clarifier and goes through either a chlorination process or an ultraviolet process depending on the millions of gallons a day the plant is designed to treat. If it is chlorinated to kill the rest of the bad stuff the good bacteria did not eat, it has an additional step of being declorinated.

Then it goes out to the discharge stream or river.

Now here's the fun fact: 7 days a week tests are performed daily on the discharge or Effluent water and on the incoming water or Influent. This water is tested for EPA acceptable levels of Solids, volatile solids, alkalinity, D.O. levels, pH levels, Fecal E. Coliform levels, Chemical Oxygen Demand, Settleable rates, and a whole slew of others.

If a treatment plant is operating too far below the designed capacity this is bad, very very bad. Think low water pressure in your shower bad. The water stagnates and becomes very hard to treat and the happy little good bacteria starve to death. This can cause the water to not be treatable, which then must still go somewhere.

So the more you pee, the happier the bacteria known as Cernio Daphnia is. The Daphnes are your friend, they demand you drink and pee.

Water that goes through your pipes is even easier to treat and get to you than you may think, so drink all you want, and flush regularly.

Oh and the manual for water treatment suggests cleaning your bathroom per week by the same amount of people that live in your house for good health. It is reccommended to use 10mL of bleach per 3 Liters of water to clean with.

Thanks for your time, this message brought to you by a class 3 water treatment operator and Lab tech.

I read your first sentence and stopped there, because I do NOT want to know anything else......lol