Water Issues

Ecologists Warn the Planet Is Running Short of Water

Water is a renewable resource, yet renewables is a pretty misleading terms because it connotes something natural and automatic.

It is, but what you don't know can hurt you, and what you don't know is that food production and other industry use vast quantities of water. When they're done with it, it's dumped backed into the ecosystem in worse shape than when they started.

A key element to tackling the crisis, say experts, is to increase the public understanding of the individual water content of everyday items. A glass of orange juice, for example, needs 850 litres of fresh water to produce, according to the Pacific Institute and the Water Footprint Network, while the manufacture of a kilogram of microchips - requiring constant cleaning to remove chemicals - needs about 16,000 litres. A hamburger comes in at 2,400 litres of fresh water, depending on the origin and type of meat used.

I don't know where they come up with these figures but I'll wager that a locally produced hamburger doesn't use much water at all. By "locally produced" I mean just that: a cow slaughtered and processed locally then wrapped and stored. Water is used to clean the slaughter area.

It grossed me out the first time I read it in The Rodale Book of Composting but that water and blood would be great for a compost pile.

As noted elsewhere in this site, composted soil is excellent at retaining water. I know this doesn't make sense to you if all you ever see is grass. You really ought to compost and see the results yourself on a hot summer day and look at dried out, infertile soil next to fertile soil that has a high amount of compost. By compost I mean kitchen waste that has been completely decomposed. It's black, brown, moist and smells great. You can dip your hands into it and literally feel that anything would grow in it.

Industry and industrial agriculture waste so much of our natural resources that locally produced never could.