Water is the most important resource in the world. Here are amazing facts about water that you may not know.
- 68.7% of the fresh water on Earth is trapped in glaciers.1
- 30% of fresh water is in the ground.1
- 1.7% of the world’s water is frozen and therefore unusable.1
- Approximately 110 billion liters of water are used in the United States per day.1
- Nearly one-half of the water used by Americans is used for thermoelectric power generation.1
- In one year, the average American residence uses over 30,000 liters (indoors and outside).1
- Water can dissolve more substances than any other liquid including sulfuric acid.1
- The freezing point of water lowers as the amount of salt dissolved in at increases. With average levels of salt, seawater freezes at -2 °C (28.4 °F).2
- About 2000 liters of water is required to grow a day’s food for a family of four.3
- To create 0,5L of beer it takes 7 liters of water.3
- 780 million people lack access to an improved water source.4
- In just one day, 200 million work hours are consumed by women collecting water for their families.4
- 1/3 what the world spends on bottled water in one year could pay for projects providing water to everyone in need.4
- Unsafe water kills 200 children every hour.4
- It takes 35 liters of water for one egg.5
- A jellyfish and a cucumber are each 95% water.5
- 70% of the human brain is water.5
- 80% of all illness in the developing world is water related.6
- Up to 50% of water is lost through leaks in cities in the developing world.6
- In Nairobi urban poor pay 10 times more for water than in New York.6
- In some countries, less than half the population has access to clean water.7
- $260 billion is the estimated annual economic loss from poor water and sanitation in developing countries.7
- 40 billion hours are spent collecting water in Africa alone.7
- The average cost for water supplied to a home in the U.S. is about $8.00 for 1,000 liters 8
- A person can live about a month without food, but only about a week without water.8
- Water expands by 9% when it freezes.8
- There is about the same amount of water on Earth now as there was millions of years ago.9
- The length of the side of a cube which could hold the Earth’s estimated total volume of water in km = 1150.10
- Children in the first 6 months of life consume seven times as much water per pound as the average American adult.11
- Americans drink more than one billion glasses of tap water per day.11
- The United States draws more than 40 billion 151 million liters of water from the Great Lakes every day—half of which is used for electrical power production.12
- 85% of the world population lives in the driest half of the planet.13
- Agriculture accounts for ~70% of global freshwater withdrawals (up to 90% in some fast-growing economies).13
- Various estimates indicate that, based on business as usual, ~3.5 planets Earth would be needed to sustain a global population achieving the current lifestyle of the average European or North American.13
- Forty-for states are anticipating water shortages by 2020.14
- 300 tons of water are required to manufacture 1 ton of steel.15
- American use 1,5 billion liters per day from toilet flushes.15
- It takes about 40 liters per day to sustain a human (this figure takes into account all uses for water, like drinking, sanitation and food production).16
- Each day, we also lose a little more than a cup of water (237 ml) when we exhale it.17
- By 2025, water withdrawals are predicted to increase by 50 percent in developing countries and 18 percent in developed countries.18
- By 2025 half the world’s people will live in countries with high water stress.19
- A water-efficient dishwasher uses as little as 1 liter per cycle but hand washing dishes uses 60 liters of water.20
- It takes more than twice the amount of water to produce coffee than it does tea.21
- Chicken and goat are the least water intensive meats to consume.21
- There have been 265 recorded incidences of water conflicts from 3000 BC to 2012.21
- Hot water can freeze faster than cold water under some conditions (commonly known as the Mpemba effect).22
- If the entire world’s water were fit into a 4 liter jug, the fresh water available for us would equal only about one tablespoon.23
- Over 90% of the world’s supply of fresh water is located in Antarctica.23
- Water regulates the Earth’s temperature.23
- On average, 37l per day of your water footprint (or 14% of your indoor use) is lost to leaks.24
- The average pool takes 70.000 liters of water to fill.24
- It takes about 250liters water to fill a bathtub.25
- Flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco, about 700 miles round-trip, could cost you more than 30.000 liters of water.25
- Water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century.26
- Only 0.007 percent of the planet’s water is available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people.26
- Three quarters of all Americans live within 10 miles of polluted water.27
- A swimming pool naturally loses about 1,000 gallons (3,785 liters) a month to evaporation.28
- Producing a gallon (3.79 liters) of corn ethanol consumes 170 gallons (644 liters) of water in total, from irrigation to final processing. On the other hand, the water requirement to make a gallon of regular gasoline is just five gallons (19 liters).28
- 40% of freshwater withdrawals in the United States are used for agriculture.29
- 65% of freshwater withdrawals in China are used for agriculture.29
- Freshwater withdrawals for agriculture exceed 90% in many countries:
- Cambodia 94%, Pakistan 94%, Vietnam 95%, Madagascar 97%, Iran 92%, Ecuador 92%.29
- An acre of corn will give off 12,000 L of water per day in evaporation.31
- In a 100-year period, a water molecule spends 98 years in the ocean, 20 months as ice, about 2 weeks in lakes and rivers, and less than a week in the atmosphere.31
- Water is the most common substance found on earth.31
- In Washington state alone, glaciers provide 1.8 trillion liters of water each summer.32
- Water makes up about 66 percent of the human body.33
- There are no scientific studies that support the recommendation to drink 8 glasses of water per day.33
- Drinking too much water can be fatal (known as water intoxication).33
- There is more fresh water in the atmosphere than in all of the rivers on the planet combined.34
- If all of the water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere fell at once, distributed evenly, it would only cover the earth with about an inch of water.34
- It takes seven and a half years for the average American residence to use the same amount of water that flows over the Niagara Falls in one second (2,5M L).34
- 263 rivers either cross or demarcate international political boundaries.35
- Of the estimated 1.4 billion hectares of crop land worldwide, around 80 percent is rainfed and accounts for about 60 percent of global agricultural output (the other 40% of output is from irrigated crop land).36
- Household leaks can waste more than 3,7 trillion liters annually nationwide. That’s equal to the annual household water use of more than 11 million homes.37
- Ten percent of homes have leaks that waste 270L or more per day.37
- A leaky faucet that drips at the rate of one drip per second can waste more than 14,000 L per year.37
- NASA has discovered water in the form of ice on the moon.40
- A 2.6 billion year old pocket of water was discovered in a mine, 2 miles below the earth’s surface.41
- Two-thirds of the world’s population is projected to face water scarcity by 2025, according to the United Nations.42
1 slice of bread requires 40 literss of water.43
1 apple requires 58liters of water.43
1 pound of chocolate requires 10.000 liters of water.43
500 sheets of paper requires 4000liters of water.43 - Ground water occurs almost everywhere beneath the land surface.
- The widespread occurrence of potable ground water is the reason that it is used as a source of water supply by about one-half the population of the United States.44
- Hydrologists estimate, according to the National Geographic Society, U.S. groundwater reserves to be at least 33,000 trillion gallons — equal to the amount discharged into the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi River in the past 200 years.45
- At any given moment, groundwater is 20 to 30 times greater than the amount in all the lakes, streams, and rivers of the United States.45

References: 1. http://water.epa.gov/learn/kids/drinkingwater/water_trivia_facts.cfm 2. http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/water.html 3. http://www.water.siemens.com/en/about_us/Pages/Water_Footprint.aspx 4. http://blueplanetnetwork.org/water/ 5. http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5303137.doc 6. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/road-to-rio/secret-life-drinking-water 7. http://fieldnotes.unicefusa.org/infographic-world-water-crisis 8. http://water.epa.gov/learn/kids/drinkingwater/waterfactsoflife.cfm 9. http://dnr.wi.gov/org/caer/ce/eek/earth/conserve.htm 10. http://www.brita.net/blue_wonder.html 11. http://www.baycountyfl.gov/water/facts.php 12. http://aqua.wisc.edu/waterlibrary/Default.aspx?tabid=74 13. http://www.unwater.org/water-cooperation-2013/water-cooperation/facts-and-figures/en/ 14. http://www.campusrec.illinois.edu/goGreen/facts.html 15. http://images.fastcompany.com/magazine/154/infographic/water-world.html 16. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/run-out-of-water.htm 17. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/h2o.htm 18. http://www.ifad.org/english/water/key.htm 19. http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/fileadmin/world_water_council/documents_old/Library/WWVision/Chapter3.pdf 20. http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1204/your-daily-dose-of-water/flash.html 21. http://pacinst.org/publication/10-shocking-facts-about-worlds-water/ 22. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_water.html 23. http://www.waterwise.org.uk/pages/fun-facts.html 24. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/water-conservation-tips/?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_r1p_us_se_w# 25. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/water-conservation-tips/?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_r1p_us_se_w# 26. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/freshwater-crisis/ 27. https://donate.nationalgeographic.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=1071 28. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-10-water-wasters/ 29. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.FWAG.ZS 30. http://www.sandiego.gov/water/conservation/kids/funfacts.shtml 31. http://www.cleanwaterways.org/kids/fun_facts.html 32. http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/quickfacts.html 33. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill/ 34. http://www.afcec.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-130322-056.pdf 35. http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/publications/atlas/atlas_html/interagree.html 36. http://www.fao.org/ag/save-and-grow/en/5/index.html 37. http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/pubs/fixleak.html 38. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/26/nasa-curiosity-rover-mars-soil-water 39. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question157.htm 40. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/11/13/water.moon.nasa/index.html?iref=24hours 41. http://www.livescience.com/32028-oldest-water-found-underground.html 42. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123483638138996305 43. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/embedded-water/ 44. http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/circ1186/html/gen_facts.html 45. http://www.ngwa.org/Fundamentals/use/Pages/Groundwater-facts.aspx 46. http://www.groundwater.org/get-informed/facts.html