Have you ever calculated? In the tens of seconds, it takes to wait for the water to warm up while filling a bottle, the water that flows away is already enough to fill a whole bottle. The moment I heard the topic of water conservation, I immediately thought that we face the problem of "having water-saving awareness but no practical actions". Isn’t this "invisibly wasted" water exactly the dilemma we need to solve? Therefore, our team analyzed the reasons behind wasteful behaviors, such as overly long showers and excessive purchases of bottled water, through on-campus shooting, data research, and interviews. We propose solutions from the perspectives of hardware upgrades and mindset changes, aiming to transform water-saving awareness into practical actions.​

To systematically understand the public’s situation regarding water conservation, we designed this survey into two core categories: the Detailed Water-saving Action Survey Category and the Water-saving Attitude and Driving Factor Survey Category. The former focuses on respondents’ daily specific water usage habits and water-saving operations, while the latter centers on their perceptions, acceptance, and motivation toward water conservation. Based on 126 valid responses collected, we analyzed dimensions including preferences for water-saving products, water usage habits, and acceptance of water-saving facilities. From the data, we identified a key finding: most respondents have basic water-saving awareness, but this awareness has not been translated into consistent water-saving actions. Therefore, this report will conduct an in-depth analysis of the key causes of this "awareness-action gap" and discuss feasible paths to transform water-saving awareness into practical water-saving behaviors. Our survey shows people are aware of water-saving, but few take real action. Take wastewater reuse—only 18.25% do it regularly, while 23.81% never do. Why the inaction? First, 60.32% haven’t tried water-saving methods because they find them too complex. Second, 64.29% need material incentives, as they believe their own actions can’t bring them any rewards.

The scenes in the video are all daily behaviors of our group members—like scrolling through phones while waiting for the water dispenser to fill our bottles, or buying new bottle water before finishing the last one. We focused most on the scenario of excessively long showers: using exaggerated dialogue and actions we actually do to highlight the showerer’s indifference to overusing water. This once again emphasizes the issue our group wants to address: most people have water-saving awareness but fail to act on it. To solve this, we brainstormed and selected two practical solutions. First, adjust water prices by region—intuitive price changes will encourage water conservation, as lower water usage means lower costs. Second, the government should strongly support the research on water-saving equipment and promote it to the public, providing subsidies to researchers and citizens to ensure high adoption rates.

In this project, I gained not only knowledge about the “water” unit but also new skills. I repeatedly read textbook content and online articles to deepen my understanding of water-related knowledge, which not only facilitated the project’s progress but also enriched my expertise. Additionally, I enhanced my leadership skills: I held group meetings to collect ideas, assigned tasks, and strived for the best final work. To make the work engaging, I continuously refined details such as the script, animations, and lines, hoping to create a short video that truly motivates people to take action and agree with our message. We faced difficulties too - squeezing time for filming and meetings amid busy campus life or restarting after some ideas were rejected. But this taught me to calmly and efficiently solve problems in a short time.

Grade:Y9

Class: Pan 516

Reporter: Yiqi (Grace) Wu