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Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy
I've also pondered - how do we "waste" water? "Waste" seems to insinuate that the water is no longer water, but that's not really true. If you use water in your home, it is treated and returns to a creek, river, ocean, etc. Still water. If you wash your car or water your lawn, it evaporates as part of the Earth's natural cycle and eventually falls again as rain somewhere else. Still water. The only true "waste" that I could think of involves the use of water in production processes where it changes state, i.e. where it is an ingredient in a chemical reaction that produces a solid product.
In my mind we do a lot of things to move water, which can definitely be harmful on a local and regional scale. But it is still water. Am I wrong here?
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No, not exactly. The concept is called "return flows"
But we don't always use the appropriate level of purification or cleanliness for the task at hand.