National Geographic: Helping Promote Water Conservation With Interactive Water Footprint Tool and Water-Friendly Prizes

To some, the extent to our massive individual daily water usage is unknown or simply misunderstood. As a means to help educate the public on this issue, National Geographic has designed an interactive Water Footprint Calculator, examining the water we use in our home appliances, dietary habits, transportation energy, and everyday stuff.

As most of us probably know, water is intrinsically embedded in just about every aspect of our everyday lives. In fact, the average american consumes nearly 2,000 gallons of water each day. However, the sources of this massive water consumption can be very difficult for some to understand. As National Geographic writes:

What may come as a surprise is that very little of that—only five percent—runs through toilets, taps, and garden hoses at home. Nearly 95 percent of your water footprint is hidden in the food you eat, energy you use, products you buy, and services you rely on.

National Geographic has taken an initiative to help educate the public on the extent and sources of our massive daily water consumption with their excellent, thorough and interactive Water Footprint Calculator. This calculator takes the water footprint one step past home utility water savings potential, it also examines water embedded in personal dietary habits (as massive, massive amounts of water are embedded the foods we eat), water used to generate energy you use for transportation (cars, airplanes etc.), and water embedded general things used in daily life (electronics, paper products etc.).

To take the initiative one step further, Nat Geo is asking people to pledge to cut their water footprint, and by doing so, you are entered to win 'water-friendly' prizes. Thus far, nearly 5,000 folks have pledged to reduce their water footprint by a total of approximately 940,000 gallons of water. Check out the Nat Geo's Water Footprint Calculator and pledge to cut your personal water footprint today!

Once you've used this tool to track your personal water usage and pledged to cut water use, navigate over to River Network's 'Water-Energy Toolkit' to calculate the electricity embedded in all of your water use and learn how much money you can save on electric bills by lowering your water footprint.