Fresh water is a basic human need and yet we are using it faster than it can be replaced. Have you ever thought how much water you need to produce a pair of jeans? A Cell phone? A burger? The amount of water required for a single shopping trip to buy one pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a burger is enough for 8,000 days of drinking water (Mina Guli, 2012). South Africa’s water use is above the world average. South Africa’s average water consumption per person per day is 237 litres. The world average is 173 litres of water per person per day (Melanie Gosling, 2018). Why would our daily water consumption be so high? Changes need to be made.
There are many causes of the water shortage in South Africa namely:
Population growing faster than storage
The city’s population has grown by 79% since 1995. Over this same period, dam storage has only increased by 15% (Trevor Bohatch, 2017). (Table. 1).
