Science 7 - LAND and SEA BREEZE and its Characteristics
Water waste in Poland and untreated sewage in Tenerife
1. Water waste
Poland & Tenerife
Group 5
Gabriela W.
Angela P
Zuzanna W.
Kamila W.
Tomasz D.
Keila Medina D.
Eric Joel Melián B.
Gabriela Mena R.
Victor Negrín B.
Alberto Nuñez M.
Princessa Aisosa O. T.
3. Water is wasted in Poland, not only by not
turning off the taps when shaving or brushing
the teeth, but also by ... throwing food away. -
To produce one loaf of bread from the grain
thrown into the ground, up to 800 liters of
water are needed for the final product with the
oven. Throwing out even 2 or 3 slices of bread,
we waste several dozen liters of water, and in
order to balance it we had to, for example,
take a shower during the day. This is a serious
problem because according to statistical data,
Polish throw out as much as 237 kg of food
annually - i.e. about 1.5 loaves a day. Every
day we indirectly waste over 1000 liters of
water.
4. Many Polish people use water for watering lawns and plants or washing their cars
- thus consuming resources of fresh, potable water, usually mined about 100
meters deep below the surface. As experts argue, it would be a much better and
more economical solution to collect rainwater, whether in a backyard barrel or a
bowl installed on the balcony in the apartment.
5. Poland uses the most energy in the world in the energy sector through coal
mining. World average is 7%, but Polish average usage of coal is 70%.
Every 3 minutes, a coal-fired power plant consumes water in the amount of one
Olympic pool.
10 liters of water are needed to produce 1 sheet of paper.
You need 91 liters of water to produce 500 grams of plastic.
In households, 35% of water is used for cleaning and 30% for flushing toilets.
On average, Poles consume 150 liters of water per person per day, of which
about 148 liters goes to the sewage system, and only 1-2 liters are consumed.
7. Water in taps
Tenerife’s tap water is not drinking water. It is chemically
treated, desalinated ocean water, so drinking it is very
unhealthy in the long run. The taste of coffee or tea
prepared with tap water differs significantly from the
quality of the same amount of water used to prepare
these drinks in Poland. That's why we use bottled water in
Tenerife. Most hotels provide water for free to their
guests. If not, it's worth going to the supermarket to get a
couple of bottles to have drinking water at hand in your
room. Of course you won't die after drinking tap water,
only that after two weeks you may have indigestion and
bowel pain. We recommend you don't drink tap water
when you have a choice not to do so.
8. 96% of fecal and industrial waters in Tenerife are thrown to the sea without any
filtering or treatment. There are 170 sewage points in Tenerife (data from 2008),
and of those 170,120 do NOT have authorisation to do any sewage. Only 2.3
million litres of water are treated, while the 96% of the remaining water sources
are not. This means in Tenerife 57 millions litres of water are dropped untreated to
the sea. And, again, this is 2008 data. It's probably even worse now. What is
worse, this happens on all of the Canary Islands, but apparently the damage is
only easily visible in Tenerife. There are 500 located sewage points across all the
Canary Islands, and of those 500 only 102 are authorised, meaning the 74% of
sewage across all the islands are unauthorised. To help imagine the scale of this,
in Santa Cruz, Tenerife's capital city, there are 34 (located, probably more)
sewage points, of which only 9 are authorised.