German Save Water Feverishly

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Anton Troianovsky, Dry Humor: Too Much Water Doesn’t Damp Germans’ Thrifty Habits; Nation’s love of conservation criticized by some as overkill; a one-minute shower. Wall Street Journal, Sept 29, 2014 (front page).
online.wsj.com/articles/theres-too-much-water-in-germany-but-that-wont-stop-people-from-sharing-bath-water-1411957801

Quote:

“People here are known to flush toilets with old bath water and to take turns bathing in the same tub without refilling it. New German toilets typically use about two gallons of water for a full flush and less than one for water-saving [after a peei].

“Other Europeans save water, too, according to a survey conducted by the Institute for Empirical Social and Communication Research in Düsseldorf last year. But in Germany, more than half say they do it to protect the environment, while in Italy, Spain, France, and England, that figure ranges from 30% to 38%.


Note:
(a) “As good as saving water might feel, they explain, a shower skipped in Marburg won't add to rainfall in the Maghreb.”
(i) Marburg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg
(ii) Maghreb
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghreb
(Arabic; meaning: Berber World; previously known to Europeans as Barbary or Barbary States)
(B) Maghreb
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Maghreb(etymology)

(b) "’The water-saving was good,’ said Alexander Limberg, a geologist for the city of Berlin, choosing his words carefully on a rainy morning as the Spree River sloshed outside his window. ‘Let's just say: We do not need to save much more.’"

Spree
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spree

(c) “But when the children leave half-full glasses standing around, Dilek Güngör dumps the contents into her watering can. * * * Ms Güngör, a writer in Berlin, is aware that saving water in the hydrologically rich capital isn't necessarily a good thing.”
(i) watering can
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watering_can
(ii) Berlin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin
(section 2.1 Topography: "an area of low-lying marshy woodlands * * * The Berliner Urstromtal (an ice age glacial valley), between the low Barnim Plateau to the north and the Teltow Plateau to the south, was formed by meltwater flowing from ice sheets at the end of the last Weichselian glaciation. The Spree follows this valley now”)

(d) "’I have no problem using a toilet somewhere that doesn't have the water-saving flush button,’ said Hans-Jürgen Leist, an engineer and social scientist at the Ecolog Institute in Hanover. ‘In fact, I generally prefer to use the normal flush button.’ Mr Leist fired his first broadside in a 2002 article in the Frankfurter Rundschau daily titled "Water Saving in Germany Is Nonsense." Undeterred by howls of protest from environmentalists, he said, he followed up with his 266-page 2007 treatise: "Water Supply in Germany: Criticism and Solution Approaches."
The abstract to the tome begins: "The Germans have become true fanatics in water saving."
The basic problem, Mr. Leist and other experts say, is one of conscience.
(i) Jürgen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen
(“a popular masculine given name in Germany and Estonia. It is cognate with George”)
(ii) The German surname Leist signifies “a maker of lasts or a cobbler, from Middle High German leist ‘last.’”
(A) last
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last
(B) last (n): "a form (as of metal or plastic) which is shaped like the human foot and over which a shoe is shaped or repaired"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/last

The illustration shows a last of two feet of different sizes.
(iii) For Ecolog Institute, see The ECOLOG-Institute for Social-Ecological Research and Education gGmbH
www.ecolog-institut.de/index.php?id=26&L=1
(“founded in 1991 by scientists of the University Hannover and staff of the Wissenschaftsladen (Science-Shop) Hannover, to build up and provide an organizational framework for socially engaged interdisciplinary research”)
(A) The word “ecolog” is not dound in any language, according to both Web search and en.wiktionary.com.
(B) German English dictionary
ökologie (noun feminine): "ecology"
(iv) Frankfurter Rundschau
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurter_Rundschau
(published its first issue on 1 August 1945, shortly after the end of World War II)

German English dictionary
rundschau (noun feminine): “(TV) news magazine, review”

choi

(e) “A water utility in the Ruhr Valley, the Rheinisch-Westfälische Wasserwerksgesellschaft * * * Siegfried Gendries, head of marketing at RWW, says one customer told him she saved water by spitting out what she used to rinse her mouth after brushing her teeth and using it to water the plants. ‘It is impossible that this is economically motivated,’ Mr Gendries says.”

German English dictionary
* “Rheinisch” and “Westfälische” are adjectives corresponding to “Rhine (river) or Rhineland” and “Westphalia.”  
(Ruhr
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhr
is in the state of in North Rhine-Westphalia.)
* wasser (noun neutral): “water”
* werk (n; plural werke, genitive werks): “work”
* wasserwerk (noun neuter, singular and plural in the same form): “waterworks”
* gesellschaft (noun feminine; from Geselle +‎ -schaft): "(business) company”
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gesellschaft

(f) “frugality and water-efficient appliances led [German] household use to decline to 32 gallons per person a day in 2012 from 38 gallons in 1990. France and the UK use about 45 gallons, according to Europe's water-utility trade group. A US government survey in 2005 found Americans connected to the public water supply used an average of 99 gallons per person a day.”
(i) Stefan Nicola, German Water Use Drops to Lowest in Two Decades, BDEW Lobby Says. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Sept 24, 2012
www.businessweek.com/news/2012-0 ... des-bdew-lobby-says
(“Private consumers and companies consumed 4.45 billion cubic meters of water in 2011, a 26 percent drop compared with 1990, the lobby said today in an e-mailed statement. Each German consumes about 121 liters (32 gallons) of water a day, down from 147 liters in 1990, BDEW said”)

Thus, the “Europe's water-utility trade group” in the WSJ report is BDEW.
(ii) Water Use in Germany Remains at Low Level – Constantly High Volume of Investment. BDEW, "05/07/2013"
www.bdew.de/internet.nsf/id/wate ... me-of-investment-en
("Water and wastewater industries invest around 6.3 billion Euros / daily per capita water use at 121 litres. Specific water use in Germany remained at a low level in 2012, amounting, on average, to around 121 litres for each German citizen, as reported by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft - BDEW) on the basis of its own calculations. Compared to 1990, the average water use, based on figures provided by public water providers in the area of households and small consumers, has fallen by 26 litres or almost 20 percent")
(iii) Benchmarking: “Learning From the Best;” Comparison of performance indicators in the German water sector. BDEW, January 2012 (the month appeared at the bottom of the document)
www.bdew.de/internet.nsf/id/86735E87EB0C1177C12579EB004E1B9F/$file/120301_BDEW_Wasser_Benchmarking_Broschuere_engl.pdf
(Figure at page 7, whose heading was "Development of the per-capita water consumption[;] Data in litres per person and day, Germany" from 1990 to 2010 (projection) (inclusive).

In 1990, German water use was "147" per person per day, according to this figure.
(iv) Pat Gao, Facing a Thirstier Future. Taiwan Review, Feb 1, 2009
taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=47603&CtNode=1671
("Although water remains cheap, initial conservation efforts have borne results. On average, per capita water consumption has remained steady since 1993, even as per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has grown. In 1993, consumption was 287 liters per person per day, while per capita GDP was US$12,475. In 2006, consumption was 284 liters [75 gallons] per person per day, while per capita GDP had more than doubled to US$28,011")
(v) Aly Fry, Water; Facts and Trends. World Business Council for Sustainable Development, August 2005
www.unwater.org/downloads/Water_facts_and_trends.pdf
(In page 7 is a figure (heading "Per capita use of water;" Source: Aquastat) which stated "Humans need a minimum of two liters of drinking water per day to survive, which is less than one cubic meter per year," and shows China "32" and US "215" cubic meters per year" per person)

215 cubic meters a year is equivalent to 589 liters a day.

I guess the figures among the countries are not comparable. I do not know what is counted in and out: eg, industrial and agricultural water use.

(g) “Now utilities such as Berliner Wasserbetriebe face a reckoning: The sewage isn't moving quickly enough through the system.”

German Enbglish dictionary
betrieb (noun masculine): "operation, company"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Betrieb