Imagine a day without water 2021 - Darspec

In the first 10 minutes after you wake up, how often do you use your faucet? Water is a precious resource. However, we often do not realize how essential it is in our daily lives. Whether it is used for rinsing, drinking, preparing food... water is omnipresent. Beyond our personal lives, how could hospitals, firefighters, farmers function without water? If the whole world lost access to water for just 24 hours, what would happen?

For the year 2021, the Darspec team is proud to collaborate once again with the "Imagine a Day Without Water" initiative. For 7 years, "Imagine a Day Without Water" has worked to raise public awareness about the preservation and importance of drinking water. The goal is to provoke questions as well as questioning: "What is the value of the water I consume on a daily basis?" This mission is perfectly in line with Darspec's values and mission: the protection of your drinking water.

Despite its importance, this resource remains relatively unknown to the general public. This lack of information, and this feeling of overabundance, could be a reason behind this surprising fact: Canada is one of the largest consumers of water in the world! For the occasion of the 2021 edition of "Imagine a Day Without Water", we have prepared several facts about drinking water that you may not have known!

Indeed, Canada is fortunate to have access to very large supplies of drinking water. However, less than half of these are said to be renewable, which means that Canada has roughly 7% of the world's renewable water reserves. Seasonal fluctuations through rainfall and snowfall can cause shortages in some years or flooding in others!  Despite this great reserve, the protection and preservation of water, as well as the limitation of any waste, remains a hot topic, even for Canadians!

Humans need to drink between 2.2 liters (for women) and 3 liters (for men) of water per day. However, we also consume water for many other things: hygiene, food, cleaning, gardening... in total in Canada, more than 300 liters on average are used daily! Just flushing the toilet once consumes about 5 liters! Canada is one of the largest consumers: among the so-called developed countries, it ranks 2^nd after the United States in terms of consumption per capita. We even consume more than twice as much water as the Europeans!

Water makes up about 70% of a human's weight, and 80% of our brain tissues are made up of water! Under these circumstances, it is obvious that hydration is crucial for our health. The benefits of water are numerous: preventing arthritis, reducing heart disease and cancer, and contributing to better dental health!

In 2004, a study conducted by Environment Canada showed that water consumption was much higher among consumers who paid a fixed fee. Indeed, the installation of a water meter coupled with a payment proportional to consumption leads to a reduction in consumption of nearly 70%!

We had written an article detailing the reasons to install a water meter.

If our planet is nicknamed the Blue Planet, since it is composed of 70% water, in reality, the vast majority of this water is unfit for human consumption. With 97% salt water, and 2% water in glaciers, we only have access to 1% of the planet's water reserves!

In conclusion, water is an essential resource, which is unfortunately often taken for granted. We must preserve it preciously, since it could become an increasingly major issue in future years. We invite you to read the rest of our articles, as well as the #ValueWater publications published during this event to stay informed about the actions required to protect drinking water.

Download the PDF version of this article below.