Think the Earth

It has become known that 1/4 of the municipalities in Korea are losing 30% of the tap water due to leakage. Seventeen municipalities have reported that rate of leakage in their region surpasses 40%. (Some of the greatest water leakage rates in large cities around the world are 35% in Mexico City and 26% in London; average rate is around 10%.)

On the other hand, there are 73 cities and counties that are using water from wells and rivers because of the lack of water supply, and approximately 100,000 people are suffering from water shortages resulting from droughts.

Water leakage not only wastes water, but it also squanders energy.

Supplying water requires a great amount of energy. Taking water from dams and other sources, purifying it, then pumping it all the way to people's homes - in Japan, approximately 8 billion kilowatts/hour is used each year to supply water to people's homes nationwide. This is equivalent to energy produced by 1 nuclear power unit.

Tokyo has made efforts over the past 50 years to reduce leakage from 20% to 3.6% by, for example, improving the material used for water pipes. The improvements the city has made corresponds to water that may be supplied to a city of approximately 2.5 million people, and in CO2 terms, this amounts to an emission reduction of 73,000 tons per year (equal to the CO2 emitted by 30,000 passenger vehicles).

So measures to tackle water leakage is very worthwhile.