http://makeameme.org/media/created/skeptical-third-world-kid...
I lived in what was essentially a rural cabin for 5 years. We had no indoor plumbing and stored water for cooking and bathing in barrels. We used a composting toilette (see "The Humanuer Handbook"). After moving back to a "real" modern house in the city, I am daily reminded of the tragic waste of potable water that modern plumbing endorses.
PS: Now sewage treatment is often far more expensive than the water it's self, but that's really a separate issue.
This can also be said for most things which the globe has major problems with: Food, Education, Electricity etc...
Don't forget, that 1C of potable water also took quite a bit of electricity and infrastructure to make clean (assuming we are discussing most modern western water systems based on water treatment and not pure well water).
It is worthwhile, to examine how necessary aspects of our consumption are, in order to be more efficient and use fewer resources.
It seems so much more obviously cost-effective, I wonder why that never took off anywhere in the US, as far as I know?
http://parisianfields.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/a-most-unusua...