Can you get by on just 5 gallons of water per day? A British woman tries it out
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 29, 2008 at 5:28 amFrom AlterNet:
Full marks to those who keep a tight rein on their carbon footprint, but don’t relax just yet: water is the new carbon, and our engorged water footprints need to be scrutinised before the rivers really do run dry. At the World Economic Forum in January, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, warned that water and food shortages would be the crises of 2008. Last week we watched the escalating food crisis reverberate around the globe. Conflicts fuelled by water shortages may well be next, triggered by climate change, population growth and poor water management.
The phrase “water footprint” was coined to describe the embedded or “virtual” water in a food or industrial product — the real volume of water used to create that product. It is difficult to avoid using products which have not been involved in a water-intensive process somewhere along the line, and the figures are staggering: it takes 1,760 litres to get one pint of milk out of a cow and into your fridge; a kilogram of cheddar swallows up 5,000 litres.
There is also, of course, plenty of water embedded in everyday activities other than eating, such as washing, cooking and cleaning. The average Brit splashes about 155 litres of water each day, compared with 20 litres for most people living in sub-Saharan Africa. Water might flow freely from our taps, but our small island is not immune to global shortages. Water is a limited commodity, and is becoming more expensive as its supply grows more difficult to guarantee.
How do we get through almost nine times more water each day than someone living in Africa? Thirsty Planet, a bottled water brand which donates part of its profits to the charity Pump Aid, challenged me to survive on 20 litres for 24 hours to find out.
Read the rest of this story from AlterNet by clicking here.
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2 Responses to “Can you get by on just 5 gallons of water per day? A British woman tries it out”
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With regard to water, the word USE needs to be defined or at least, clarified.
It is a generally recognized standard that in the US, the average person USES 100 gallons per day for domestic in-house USE purposes. A family of 4 would is assumed to USE 400 gallons per day, or 146,000 gallons per year which is 0.45 acre feet/year.
However, all of this USE is returned to the sewage treatment plant, treated and returned to tributary streams or RE-USED.
Again, it is a generally accepted standard that only about 5% of the water USED is not returned for re-use and is therefore CONSUMED. This is where the words Consumptive Use come from and are referred to as CU.
Note that this article states,… 20 litres each day are used by most people living in sub-Saharan Africa. 20 litres is about 5 gallons. If the average person in the US diverts 100 gallons for dometic use per day and only consumes (CU) 5%, that is 20 litres or 5 gallons per day.
Generally speaking, people living in sub-Suharan African do not utilize sewer systems that return 95% of their water back to the tributary from which it came. In Africa, the entire 20 litres is consumptively used because it is eventually discharged on the ground where it evaporates.
The next time you hear that one acre foot of water in the US furnishes domestic water for only two families….keep in mind that the number is actually more like 20 families, unless the local sewer treatment facility is discharging directly in the sea. Septic tanks with leach fields also result in a CU of about 5% CU, but 10-15% CU is generally accepted for planning and appropriation purposes.
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