Could you live on four liters of water per day?

A nonprofit is challenging people to try it for a day to encourage conservation and highlight the distress of those who live in places where clean water is not readily available.

“Fill a one liter water bottle and use it for everything: cooking, cleaning, drinking and bathing. You can refill your bottle 3x. Try to use all four liters without going over. Stay hydrated!” the human rights non-profit DIGDEEP says.

Four liters is the “minimum necessary to survive,” according to a Forbes columnist. That said, “between 50 and 100 liters of water per person per day are needed to ensure that most basic needs are met and few health concerns arise,” the United Nations says, citing the World Health Organization.

DIGDEEP founder and executive director George McGraw explained the challenge.

“People know we’re in the middle of one of the worst droughts in history, but it doesn’t feel real to most of us,” he said. “There has never been a better time to learn why water matters and how to protect it. Even without a drought, the USGS estimates we’ll run a deficit in the Colorado River by 2060 the size of the annual consumption of LA.”

In a Triple Pundit column, Michael Kourabas, who attempted the challenge, explained why it’s so hard.

“Most of us use nearly 4 liters of water — in other words, all of the water allotted in the challenge — every time we wash our hands or face. Most Americans use more than 400 liters of water every single day, or 100 times what the challenge requires. A single toilet flush uses about 6 liters of water, and a mere three flushes amounts to more water than most other people in the world use all day to clean, cook, drink and bathe,” the columnist said.

Ian: I have to add that it would depend on what sort of water I had to drink!