Green Monkey Tales 19:

Sorry it has been so long! This is an essay I had to do for school as a competition. I got second place and thought I would share it!

Water… the Cycle of Life

10 gallons of water is used every minute when showering. Isn’t that crazy? For one thing, it is not good for the water bill, and secondly, it's not good for the Earth. Now, Earth is our only working planet, do we really want to ruin it? Here are some ways to save water:

Turn off the water when brushing teeth, or when rubbing soap on hands to wash them, shower instead of taking a bath, turn off the water when hand-washing dishes, and use a dishwasher (if you have one) instead of hand-washing dishes.These are a lot of examples to conserve water.

Now, you may be thinking, water will never run out! Well, all living things need it. It also is severely important to the Earth, but it is being taken advantage of. Did you know that 97% of water is in the oceans, which means that it is salt water. The water cycle goes evaporation, condensation, precipitation, transpiration, runoff, repeat. Water comes out of lakes and rivers into the atmosphere to come down as precipitation. It doesn’t come out of thin air. “We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” said by Jacques Yves Cousteau. Only 1% of water on Earth is drinkable, and humans can only survive 5-7 days without water, but weeks without food.

Now, Earth has lost about a quarter of water since it was formed. That might not seem like a lot, but it is. The oceans were 1-2 times bigger when the Earth was formed. We have lost a lot of water in the 4.6 billion years Earth has been around, and if kept up, there will be even more loss. Some may think that water will never run out. Well, some ways that it does are; Climate change is altering weather and water patterns, making it difficult to predict, drought and global warming, and wetlands are disappearing.

There are still many ways to conserve water. Here are some things are how they work:

• Rain barrels; they collect rainwater that can be used for car washing, and even showering!

• Araetors; they reduce the amount of water that comes out of the faucet and controls the stream.

• Lastly, try putting a plastic water bottle in the toilet tank. It may sound weird, but it makes it so less water needs to be used to fill the tank.

The Earth will most likely run out of water, but by following some of these methods, our limited water will last much longer.