We Need Water

We need to drink water to stay healthy. When we don’t have enough water to drink, we become very sick. We can live without food for a long time, but if we don’t drink for three days, we die. What else do we need water for? Let's make a list: cooking, washing clothes, washing dishes, brushing teeth, bathing, and yes, flushing the toilet. Farms and factories use a lot of water to grow food and to create things that make our lives comfortable. We need a lot of water!

 

How Much Do We Have?

Earth is a water planet. Seventy percent (70%) of Earth is covered by water. Because there is so much water, it is easy to believe that we will always have as much water as we want. But this is not true. We have very little water to use.

The fact is that most of the water on Earth - 97% - is salt water. We can’t drink it. We can’t even use it to water plants that we grow for food. The other 3% of water on Earth is fresh water. However, we can only drink 1 % of it. The other 2% is very difficult to get to. Imagine that all the fresh water on Earth - 3% — fills five large bottles. The water that we can drink would fill only two teaspoons.

 

We Waste It and We Pollute It

We waste the “two teaspoons” of water that we have. We also pollute it. Many factories put chemicals' into the water. In some places, the water becomes so polluted that the fish and plants die. Even our rainwater becomes polluted. We need water to live.

Let’s keep it clean.