It’s amazing how quickly something becomes the new norm.

Remember when 87 litres of water a day seemed like a tough task to master? Now, if you happen to be one of those Capetonians with a conscience and a sense of community, you’re probably noticing that limiting your personal use to 50 litres a day is more than doable.

Of course you have to make changes that are rather inconvenient, but you simply get stuck in and those changes become a part of your daily routine.

America clearly isn’t suffering the same fate, because their water usage is through the roof. These stats come via the the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Water Science section:

Estimates vary, but each person uses about 80-100 gallons of water per day [in litres, that is between 302 and 378 litres].

Over on the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) site, they offer this:

• The average American family uses more than 300 gallons of water per day at home. Roughly 70 percent of this use occurs indoors.
• Each American uses an average of 88 gallons [333 litres] of water a day at home.

This graphic is a pretty decent illustrator of just that:

Those figures above are actually on the conservative side, with The Water Information Project saying that the average Yank uses 176 gallons (666 litres) per day.

I would imagine that last figure includes water used for agricultural purposes, so we’ll stick to the 300+ litre estimates up top.

Just a little food for thought.

Also, a reminder that our Takealot.com R500 voucher competition is still running – find those details here.

[source:usgs&epa]