text: Earth Day 2011: OUR WATER FOOTPRINT | Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility
  Earth Day 2011: OUR WATER FOOTPRINT
  Elementary students consider how much water we consume and what impact it has by hearing some facts and discussing the story of one girl's water consumption.
  Ask students about the ways we need water. Discuss the importance of drinking water on a daily basis. By drinking water our bodies are able to digest food and flush out dirt (waste). Water also allows our bodies to control our temperature. Each day we must replace 2.4 liters (over half a gallon) of fluid—either through drinking liquid and eating foods that have lots of water in them - like fruits and vegetables.
  The footprint we'll be dealing with today is called our water footprint. It's similar to the kind of footprint we make in the sand—only it's an impact we're having on the planet and our environment (not just on the sand) when we use water. Our "water footprint" describes the impact our water use is having on our planet's water resources.
  Americans waste and pollute enormous amounts of water every day. The long-term effects of such behavior are dramatic. In some parts of the US, rivers are actually running dry. In many countries around the world, the shortage of clean water is a life or death issue. Around 1 billion people have no access to a clean source of drinking water and about 2.6 billion people - half the developing world - lack basic sanitation (which causes diseases to spread). Americans contribute to this problem because many of the goods we buy come from other parts of the world where water is scarce. And it takes a lot of water to produce almost anything.
  Jen's Water Usage
  Jen's teacher greets her students and gives them a writing assignment. Jen makes a mistake. So she tears the page out of her notebook, crumples it and starts again. She does this several times before finally getting it right. On her way to lunch Jen goes into the girl's bathroom where she notices a leaking faucet as she washes her hands. She ignores it and heads to lunch where she hangs out with her friends. The school lunch today is beef patties and rice — not a student favorite. Most of it ends up in the garbage as students make their way to the playground.
  On returning home, Jen and her brother have a snack and a bottle of water from the fridge. Mom sends them to play in the yard. It's hot, so they splash each other with the garden hose until it's time to go inside and have dinner. They put their wet clothes in the hamper, put on clean clothes and join mom for dinner—pasta with a meatball sauce. Afterwards Jen and her brother do the dishes, keeping the tap running all the while. After doing homework and watching some TV, Jen goes upstairs. She tosses her clothes in the hamper, puts on clean pajamas, washes her face and brushes her teeth (while keeping the tap running) and says goodnight to mom before crawling into bed and switching the light off to go to sleep.
  Earth Day Lesson Collection
  Our collection of lessons for Earth Day/Earth Month includes activities on everything from Climate Change to organic food.