We live in a wild watery world! More than 70 percent of the earth is covered in it! That’s the slippery truth. And we love water, don’t we? It’s cool and refreshing to drink, fun to swim and play in and when we take baths it keeps us squeaky-clean. Not to mention every living thing on earth needs water to survive.

So if the earth is covered in water, we have plenty of it, right? Actually there are many places in the world where water is in short supply. But another problem is that not all water is useable. Because of pollution and other organisms that can grow in water, a lot of the earth’s water is not fit for drinking and swimming.

AWARE Kids, your mission is to conserve water. Fill a 4 litre/1gallon bucket with water. Then, consider the following facts:

· A ten-minute shower uses more than 380 litres/100 gallons of water. The average full bathtub uses 150 litres/40 gallons of water.

· Each flush of the average toilet uses more than 20 litres/6 gallons of water.

· A leaky faucet (even a slow drip) can waste more than 1300 litres/350 gallons of water each week.

· It takes 95 litres/25 gallons of water to run the dishwasher. It takes the same amount of water to wash the dishes from three meals by hand.

· A washing machine can use up to 190 litres/50 gallons of water to wash one full load of laundry.