All About Water

Water coves 71% of the Earth’s surface, makes up 55-78% of your body, and is recycled every day through the natural process of precipitation. So why are environmentalists so worried about protecting it?

Because of the water crisis… Pollution of water sources is harming biodiversity and causing 1.1 billion people to have inadequate access to safe drinking water. Even more concern is raised by the fact that, according to the World Bank, “88% of all diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.”

Since 2006, the availability of drinking water per capita has been shrinking due to a growing population, astounding rates of consumption, and high levels of water population.

But it doesn’t have to be this way… you and I are wasting gallons of water every day without even knowing it!

Since 1976, the bottled water industry has grown by 2000 percent! While this demonstrates a growing concern over quality tap water (which is more of a marketing push by the big water companies than anything), it is a much larger problem in itself.

According to Oregon State University, manufacturers are using over 18 billion barrels of oil and nearly 130 billion gallons of fresh water each year to simply make the plastic bottles - and another 41 billion gallons of water to fill them. That means they’re wasting more than three liters of fresh water to package only one! [via Oregon State University]

What’s more surprising is the fact that bottled water isn’t any better than tap water. Tap water comes from closed watersheds that are protected from pollution and treated regularly at the source as well as in the distribution system. Our tap water is rigorously tested to ensure it’s quality - could you imagine the outcry if our public water wasn’t drinkable!

Unfortunately for consumers paying $1.50 per liter for bottled water, their water’s source is sometimes unregulated as well as the testing processes.

We live in a society that is paranoid about having quality water, yet we’re letting it drip away without concern. Bottled water costs 3000 times as much as tap water ($1.50 per liter compared to $0.0005) and it’s not even proven to be a better product. [read more: BC Government - Tap vs Bottled Water comparison]

But the water crisis doesn’t begin and end with bottled water. One of the other things environmentalists have a major beef with is…well, beef.

To raise a cow and produce meat, it takes a substantial amount of water. In fact, “to produce one pound of beef it takes 2000 gallons of water! You actually save more water by not eating one pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year!”(via ViroPop)

Newsweek once put it this way: “the water that goes into a 1000 pound steer would float a destroyer” (VegSource).

We need to start paying more attention to not only the way we live our lives, but also what we eat and drink. If we want to turn the water crisis around then it’s our job to play a small part.

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.” -Mohandas Gandhi