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- In the United States
we're facing a national water shortage.
Government backed research shows
that in a little over of 50 years,
half of the freshwater basins may not meet our demands.
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For this story I'm in my home state of Florida.
Here, the water crisis is real
and demanding positive action.
(birds tweeting) (soft gentle music)
This is Silver Springs, almost half of Florida's freshwater
comes from aquifers like this.
Natural, underground reservoirs
that are topped up by rainfall.
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But earlier this year,
wet season rainfall in the south of the state fell by 45%.
And the pressure is mounting,
as Florida's population grows
by around 300,000 people a year.
Our water situation is unsustainable.
I've come to Maples Botanical Garden,
a leader in best practices
for conserving water and hoard of culture.
If I understand correctly,
up to half of Florida's residential water
goes back into irrigating our gardens.
What can we do to make that more efficient.
- We have about six months out of the year
where we have an abundance of rainfall
and six months where we have drought conditions.
Being a botanical garden,
we really focus on selecting plants
that can take those cycles of drought.
If you do that we can really cut down on irrigation.
That's really climate friendly gardening.
We're working with nature.
- Is there something we can do at home
to collect our water, protect our water and reuse it.
- Yeah, so in my own home I have rain barrels.
When it rains we collect water
and I use that water to water my garden,
throughout the dry months of the year.
Quite often we think of the environment
as something that's out there.
We think of the Everglades,
but really the things we do in our own homes,
that's apart of the environment.
Our backyard is part of the environment.
- But it's not just outside where we can make a difference.
On average, American families use more than
300 gallons of water everyday.
And a lot of that is being wasted.
I'd love to see how my family could save water at home.
- Just in time America.
- From dripping toilets or faulty facets leaks in our homes
can loose nearly a trillion gallons of water every year.
Just replacing a 50 cent washer
on a faucet can save up to 3,000 gallons of water per year.
And many of us still
rinse our dirty dishes under a running faucet
before loading them into the dishwasher.
This is a huge waste of water.
Because you actually need the dishes to be dirty
as the enzymes in the detergent
latch on to food particles to work effectively.
We have less water than we think.
But the minute we realize that every drop is valuable,
we begin to change our behavior for the better.
Whether that's creating a climate friendly garden,
fixing that leaky faucet,
or just not pre-rinsing our dishes.
It's these little water saving measures
that can be done by me in the home
and all of us across America.
That can help make a huge difference
for our future water security.
(soft gentle music)