Question 1: How much of the world's water is suitable for human use?

A. 0.25%

B. 2.5%

C. 25%

Answer 1. Only about 0.25 per cent of the world's water can be used to meet human needs.

Fact: Of all fresh water 90% is held in glaciers and polar icecaps or locked in deep aquifers.

Question 2: Which human activity uses the most water?

A. Personal Hygiene

B. Cooking

C. Irrigation

A2. 70 per cent of all water is used for irrigation.

Q3. How much water does one city-dweller use per day just by taking a shower, flushing the toilet, washing dishes and clothes, etc.?

A. 2–5 litres

B. 100–300 litres

C. 1000–1500 litres

A3. At the lower end: For example, the daily water consmuption in the city of Hong Kong, China, is 112 litres per person.

At the high end: The average consumption in Bangkok is about 265 litres per person per day.

Q4. How many tanker trucks would be needed to bring and take away water sufficient for a town of about 10,000 inhabitants?

A. One truck for each person

B. Two trucks

C. Three kilometers worth of trucks

A4. In our fictive example, each day a convoy of 150 tanker trucks (a queue 3 km long) would be needed to bring the water to the 10.000 inhabitatnts.

Q5. Imagine your tap is leaking drop after drop. How much water is lost from this leaking tap per day?

A. About 100 liters of water

B. About a glass of water

C. About the same as a toilet flushing

A5. Yes, a leaking tap can lose up to 100 litres per day, which is the equivalent of about eight buckets of water.

Fact: If the tap keeps dripping over one year, about 35,000 litres of clean fresh water will be lost."

Q6. Which of the following products takes the most water to produce?

A. Wool

B. Beer

C. Paper

A6.

1 litre of beer requires 25 litres of water.

1 kg of wool takes 150 litres.

1 kg of paper demands 300 litres.

Q7. How many litres of water are needed to grow one kilogram of chicken?

A. 3.5 litres

B. 3500 litres

C. 70,000 litres

A7.

3,500 litres = 1 kg of broiler chicken.

Fact: The bird drinks little of this water - most of it is used to grow its feed.

Q8. How many litres of water are needed to grow one kilogram of rice and one kilogram of beef?

A. 1 kg rice: 19 litres | 1 kg beef: 100 litres

B. 1 kg rice: 190 litres | 1 kg beef: 1,000 litres

C. 1 kg rice: 1900 litres | 1 kg beef: 100,000 litres

A8.Rice needs about 1,900 litres. Rice is the most thirsty grain crop.

One kilogram of beef needs a staggering 100,000 litres of water.

Fact: The animals drinks little of this water - most of it is used to grow their feed.

Q9. What is the estimated number of people globally without access to a safe water supply?

A. 400 million w/o safe water supply

B. 1 billion w/o safe water supply

C. 4 billion w/o safe water supply

A9. Yes, at the end of 1999, about one billion people lacked access to a safe drinking water supply.

2.4 billion people did not enjoy access to modern sanitation facilities. This constitutes over one third of the world's population.