The Formidable Effects of Water Pollution and Its Solutions

It may not seem like it, but freshwater is a very precious resource in this world and should not be taken for granted. Water is a renewable resource, but it can also be treated as a non-renewable resource because it is being consumed faster than it is being renewed.

Water on Earth does replenish and purify itself through natural processes, such as the hydrological cycle, but it is a rather slow process. Meanwhile, the current amount of freshwater is rapidly decreasing. Water is the basic ingredient to all forms of life. Whether it's used for agricultural, industrial, environmental, recreational, household, or even other purposes, we all depend on water to survive, no matter what we do.

It may seem like there is a plentiful amount of water to go around to every single person on Earth, but the truth is that about 97.5 percent of all the water in the world is saltwater, which is not suitable for our own personal purposes. This then leaves only 2.5 percent freshwater left. Of that 2.5 percent freshwater, 30.8 percent is groundwater, and 68.9 percent is frozen in the glaciers and snow caps. This only leaves about 0.3 percent freshwater that is of easy access to humans.

There are approximately 6.5 billion people on this planet (and still rising at a rapid pace), and if the average person consumes about 123 gallons [466 liters] daily, then that would mean that the whole world consumes about 799,500,000 gallons [3,026,436,721,308 liters] a day. With all this freshwater being wasted, we will need to invent and use more ways of recycling and purifying water with little or no energy at all. If we don't do something about the rapid declination of freshwater fast, sooner or later, the world will run out of freshwater completely, while there's still a couple billion people waiting for their share of freshwater to be delivered. We will have to find new ways to recycle the water that has already been used, and to cut back on every individuals share of freshwater, at the same or even faster rate that it is being consumed. All in all, the lack of freshwater is one of the major global crises on this planet.