Brushing your teeth uses 1 gallon of water. Doing a load of laundry requires 30-50 gallons of water. Taking a shower uses 30 gallons of water. One penny buys 160 eight-ounce glasses of water in a typical U.S. community. Americans have access to the cleanest and safest drinking water in the world.
Factories use huge amounts of water in their industrial processes.
It takes about 100,000 gallons of water to manufacture one car. To produce a year's subscription of newspapers for one family, it requires 60,000 gallons of water. Three million gallons of water are needed to produce a single day's supply of U.S. newsprint. It requires 45 gallons of water to make a pound of plastic. A growth in the number of meat-packing plants in Southwest Kansas is a result of the continued expansion of corn production due to irrigation.