National Water Quality Month
Read up on the small ways you can keep your community’s water clean, from picking up after your pets to avoiding pesticides, certain antibacterial chemicals, etc.
Position eco-friendly household products and sustainable practices as community water-protection solutions during August awareness month.
- 5 household swaps that protect your local watershed
- How your yard care impacts coastal water quality—and what to do instead
- Community water cleanup challenge: August action guide
- Eco-friendly pet care products that keep runoff clean
The United Nations has declared 2005-2015 an International Decade for Action “Water for Life” in order to emphasize the importance of water quality as it relates to sanitation, human rights, geography, urbanization and sustainability. Emphasizing how interlinked water systems are, the Audobon Society points to the dangers of runoff from agriculture, forestry, construction and people’s personal yards: “Each individual household may not produce enough pollution to force a beach closing or cause a fish kill, but the combined output of all the homes in a community can be severe. And, consider that about half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of a coastline where runoff flows quickly to the ocean.
This is why watershed protection — attention not only to the body of water but the area that drains into it — is important.”
“Each individual household may not produce enough pollution to force a beach closing or cause a fish kill, but the combined output of all the homes in a community can be severe. And, consider that about half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of a coastline where runoff flows quickly to the ocean. This is why watershed protection — attention not only to the body of water but the area that drains into it — is important.”