What Are the Environmental Benefits of Water Efficiency?

Water efficiency, together with reducing pollutants such as pesticides, can be an effective way to reduce pollution caused by excessive watering and water use. Some of the environmental benefits that are aided by water efficiency include:

• Fewer sewage system failures caused from excess water overwhelming the system.
  
  
• Healthy, rather than depleted and dried up, natural pollution filters such as downstream wetlands.
  
  
• Reduced water contamination caused by polluted runoff due to overirrigating agricultural and urban lands.
  
  
• Reduced need to construct additional dams and reservoirs or otherwise regulate the natural flow of streams, thus preserving their free flow and retaining the value of stream and river systems as wildlife habitats and recreational areas.
  
  
• Reduced need to construct additional water and wastewater treatment facilities.
  
  
• Elimination of excessive surface water withdrawals that degrade habitat both in streams and on land adjacent to streams and lakes.

Efficient water use can also reduce the amount of energy needed to treat wastewater, resulting in less energy demand and, therefore, fewer harmful byproducts from power plants.

• Most people realize that hot water uses up energy, but supplying and treating cold water requires a significant amount of energy too. American public water supply and treatment facilities consume about 56 billion kilowatt-hours per year—enough electricity to power more than 5 million homes for an entire year.
  
  
• If just 1 percent of American homes replaced an older toilet with a new WaterSense labeled toilet, the country would save more than 38 million kilowatt-hours of electricity—enough electricity to supply more than 43,000 households for one month.
  
  
• Letting your faucet run for five minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours.