Reduce your personal (or household) water footprint.
First, take one day to track how much water you use on a regular basis. Track the number of minutes you
have the sinks on, how many times you flush the toilet, how many loads of laundry you run. In addition to
thinking about your direct water usage, think about indirect usage, such as how much water is used to
grow the food you consume or to generate your electricity. Here is a useful water footprint calculator
(https://www.watercalculator.org/wfc2/q/household/) that I recommend using as part of this exercise. Do
some research and think about how much water you regularly use over the course of a week.
Then, spend two weeks trying to reduce that water consumption. See how much you can cut it down. In
the final discussion post (Week 10), you can reflect on what strategies you used and what was the most
effective.
Were you surprised by how much water you used, and have you thought much about indirect water
usage?
Where you live, is water shortage a concern? Why or why not, and how should we think about the uneven
distribution of water access globally?
Sample Solution
