Avaliação do consumo de água de alunos do ensino médio de instituições públicas e privadas do Rio de Janeiro-RJ com propostas de racionalização do uso da água

Abstract

As the population density grows, the capacity of water resources to supply that demand diminishes, in Brazil that happens mainly due to bad management on the use of urban waters. The current water crisis causes the search for ways to the rational use of water. The present study aims to evaluate the disaggregated water consumption of high school students in four educational institutions located in the city of Rio de Janeiro-RJ. The study develops interviews with high school students to identify their daily habits, the biggest points of water consumption and possible waste. With the evaluation of the disaggregated consumption, measures like the installation of water saving devices and the development of environmental education pratices were proposed, in order to reduce water consumption and possible waste. In the 4 studied institutions, average daily consumption per student was between 8.8 liters and 31.1 liters for the toilets, from 3.6 liters to 4.9 liters for water taps, from 0.8 liters to 2.0 liters for the drinking fountains and from zero liters to 2.9 liters for showers. In all schools, it was noticed that the toilet is the device with the highest consumption of water, with averages that ranges from 62% to 78% of total water consumption per student. It was verified that the total water consumption, of all sanitary appliances put together, per student ranges from 14 liters to 40 liters a day, but it is important to note that there are behavioral and infrastructure differences between institutions. To develop propositions towards a rational use of water in the schools, the suggestions of the students that were expressed on the questionnaires were taken in consideration. In all the schools analyzed, from 32% to 46% of the students' responses indicated that the environmental awareness of the students, teachers and school staff was a way to achieve the rational use of water, so it is important to take into account the elaboration of environmental education projects focused into saving water resources. It is hoped that this research will serve as a basis for the development of projects aimed at water savings within the institutions studied, as well as a model for the evaluation of water consumption for future studies.