Water Conservation

Florida is surrounded by water and is home to the second-largest freshwater lake located entirely in the United States—Lake Okeechobee.

But with all that water, it’s still a finite resource. Although the globe is about 70% covered by water, less than 1% is available for human use.

Every drop counts.

Did you know

The average American family uses more than 300 gallons of water per day at home. Roughly 70 percent of this use occurs indoors.
Bathrooms are the largest use of water in the home, using more than 50% of all indoor water.
Heating water is typically the second largest use of energy in a home (after space heating and cooling).
Letting the faucet run for five minutes while washing dishes can waste 10 gallons of water and uses enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 18 hours.
A leaky faucet that drips at the rate of one drip per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons per year. That’s the amount of water needed to take more than 180 showers.
An old or worn toilet flapper can cause a toilet to flush on its own or silently leak thousands of gallons a year.
A showerhead leaking at 10 drips per minute wastes more than 500 gallons per year. That’s the amount of water it takes to wash 60 loads of dishes in a dishwasher.

Showers are usually the third-largest use of water in the typical American home, accounting for around 17 percent of the water used indoors.
The average shower is 8.2 minutes and uses 17.2 gallons of water.
- Baths use even more water, about 35-50 gallons of water on average.
The average American reports taking about 6 showers per week.
- That's 33.6 billion gallons of water every week, more than the capacity of Lake Okeechobee.
- That equates to about 1.7 trillion gallons of water showering in a year.
Florida uses 112 billions of gallons of water annually just in the shower.

The average household's leaks can account for nearly 10,000 gallons of water wasted every yea and early 900 billion gallons of water annually nationwide.
- 5-10% of homes have easy-to-fix leaks that drip away 90 gallons or more per day.
These types of leaks are often easy to fix, requiring only a few tools and hardware that can pay for themselves in water savings.
- Fixing easily corrected household water leaks can save homeowners about 10% on their water bills.

Running the dishwasher only when it’s full can eliminate one load of dishes per week and save the average family nearly 320 gallons of water annually.
Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth can save 8 gallons of water per day and, while shaving, can save 10 gallons of water per shave.
- Assuming you brush your teeth twice daily and shave 5 times per week, you could save nearly 5,700 gallons per year.