Why does water consumption increase with development?
Domestic
LICs -
- Low income countries do not have pipelines in their homes, no running water / taps
- Rely of women and children to get water every morning
- Walk several kilometres a day to carry 20kg of water home
- The water is difficult to get and is used sparingly
- The washing up is done by hand
- Water used for washing up is then re-used for personal hygiene purposes
- People will do their washing at source if they live near a river - less water consumption
HICs -
- High income countries use water for a lot of domestic practices
- Kitchen appliances such as Dishwasher (70-120 litres)
- Personal hygiene
- Bath (120-200 litres)
- Shower (60-80 litres)
- Flush (6-12 litres)
- Luxuries
- Car Wash
- Filling up swimming pools
- Tourism
- Keeping golf courses green
Agriculture
Irrigation methods -
LICs -
- Hand worked bucket - in Guilin, China
- Flow of 2 litres / second
- Person is needed to operate it
HICs -
- Automated spray system - UK
- Automated sprinklers
- 75 litres per second
- Easy to operate - touch of a button
- Taken for granted
Industrial
LICs -
- Small scale industries
- Home run cottages / self-built units
HICs -
- Large scale factories
- Millions of litres of water used a day
- Coca Cola in India - 1 million litres of water daily