# Water Footprint



## jebatty (Dec 13, 2013)

This water footprint tool provides an informative insight into how a person or family uses or conserves water. As water resources continue to be under stress, conservation continues to rise in importance.

http://environment.nationalgeograph...change-the-course/water-footprint-calculator/


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## Highbeam (Dec 13, 2013)

I think the tool is broken. Near the end it would not allow me to select lower water using items. My average was shooting up out of control.

There's plenty of water for most of us. It's those folks in certain areas that are at risk.


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## EatenByLimestone (Dec 13, 2013)

Is this the next emergency that we're going to be taxed over?


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## woodgeek (Dec 13, 2013)

Its an educational site....I didn't know that 90% of 'my' water usage was outside the home....and half that was my dairy consumption.  Intriguing.


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## jebatty (Dec 14, 2013)

> didn't know that 90% of 'my' water usage was outside the home....and half that was my dairy consumption.


This surprised me also. My prior focus was on reducing water usage in our home, which remains important. But outside the home water usage is really big.



> There's plenty of water for most of us.


That depends on where "most of us" live, and then the answer also is not very clear. Even where there is lots of water, more and more of that water is toxic for supporting life. 

Minnesota has lots of water -- 10,000 lakes as the motto goes, plus some of the most extensive pre-settlement wetlands in the lower 48. Yet, due mostly to industrial agricultural irrigation, which is increasing at a large rate, some aquifers are already being depleted to the point where wells are failing. Maybe even more significant is the pervasive and rapid expansion of ground water pollution by nitrates and other chemicals, also caused by industrial agricultural operations and application of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Some communities are trucking in drinking water. 

Other areas of the US and of the world have serious water shortages and water pollution. Yes, there is lots of water. The problem is that most of that water is not usable to support human life and a vast number of other living things, and what water now is usable is being polluted and becoming unusable.


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## Highbeam (Dec 16, 2013)

jebatty said:


> Yes, there is lots of water. The problem is that most of that water is not usable to support human life and a vast number of other living things, and what water now is usable is being polluted and becoming unusable.


 
That is completely silly. I have never yet met a water supply that could not be made usable. Sounds like propoganda.


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## jebatty (Dec 16, 2013)

You crack me up -- have to share your comment with my friends.


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## velvetfoot (Dec 16, 2013)

The whole country was forced to use low consumption toilets because of what, California?  Crazy.


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## Highbeam (Dec 16, 2013)

It's just money. I can distill water, filter it, chemically treat it, boil it, whatever and it will be drinkable. Politics are usually responsible for what many believe to be a shortage.  

Like any resource, as we consume the low hanging fruit we will have to be smarter. Water is similar to oil in some ways except that the water doesn't get burned, just recyled for future use.


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## Frozen Canuck (Dec 16, 2013)

Highbeam said:


> I have never yet met a water supply that could not be made usable.



True in a way, we send our armed forces as do you to third world nations post disaster to purify drinking water. So yes it is doable however the question might be better stated as what are the costs. How much fuel do we consume to purify that which we only had to keep clean in the first place? It's quite likely that conservation is the better route when we have a choice.


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## Frozen Canuck (Dec 16, 2013)

velvetfoot said:


> The whole country was forced to use low consumption toilets because of what, California? Crazy.



Counter point….is it wise in any way to flush 5 gallons of potable water to be rig of a few ounces of urine? Is there a sound reason to not conserve? I understand all the reasons that come down to greed/laziness & other human traits, however is there a sound reason not to?


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## velvetfoot (Dec 16, 2013)

Not sure what the latest thing is in dual flush toilets and optimization of design for 1.5 gallons per flush, but the ones I have weren't perfected when they were insalled.  The low flow showers we have, not sure if it was required or not, aren't a lot of laughs either.   My point was the entire country was forced to go the way of the dry states, sort of like other stuff California.


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## woodgeek (Dec 16, 2013)

Both low flow showers and esp toilets have gotten a lot better since the 90s.  Think those fuel eff cars in 1983, versus a 2013 model with the same mpg.


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## jebatty (Dec 17, 2013)

I see this thread has brought out the "why use less and conserve a resource" crowd when you can "use more and waste a resource." Did my parents make a huge error when they taught me, and my wife and I have taught our children, who are teaching their children that everything is a tradeoff and resources are not unlimited? With regard to water use we have "low flow" on everything, the primary toilet is dual flush and the others are 1.5 gallon flush, and we don't water our lawn. BTW, the dual flush, pressurized toilet has never failed to do what it is supposed to do. We also have a well so in a sense our water is "free," although the cost of a well now is in excess of $5000; and we have a septic system, so no sewer bill for the waste water, although the cost of a septic system also is in the $5000+ range. 

With having doled out the big $$$ for a well and septic system, why conserve? Simple: to reduce the likelihood that we ever again will need to drill a new well or replace the pump, pull the pump and put in a new screen, or put in a new septic system. Everything is a trade-off, use less now to better assure we have more later or can use present assets for more valuable things now. Waste not, want not is a major focus of our lives. And not conserving is just another form of greed and laziness, or perhaps the result of being a few gallons short of a full water tank.

Sure, pure water is just a matter of having enough money to purify it. Most people in our area cannot afford to buy a new well or buy water when their well water is nitrate contaminated. Same for new septic systems when old ones fail, and by failing the coliform bacteria contaminate other surface waters or nearby wells. Tell them "no worry, your water can be made usable" with the money and resources you don't have.


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## Highbeam (Dec 17, 2013)

It's obvious that you have misunderstood things here jebatty. First, nobody ever recommended wasting a resource. That is just something that you dreamed up to make some sort of argument. Second, convserving water used from your well has nothing to do with water bring available in the well later on. Water from a well is not some sort of fixed bank. What you don't use will flow down hill to a user that does consume it.

I too have a well and septic and use very little water. No irrigation, dual flush toilets, front loaders, etc. This is not the point of the article which implies that we're running out of water. That's just not so, we have just as much water now as we always have. Water doesn't go away it just recycles. What you're really seeing is a water rights grab where people are claiming river flows for things like fish.

I would be much more concerned about how some of our groundwater sources are being polluted by the petroleum industry. We won't run out of water but the polluted water will cost money to make drinkable and that new burden is heavy.


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## jebatty (Dec 17, 2013)

We're coming to common ground and we have a common basis to do so because we both exhibit behaviors which do not waste and which conserve water. We likely have just as much water now as ever, but back to that in a moment.


> Second, conserving water used from your well has nothing to do with water bring available in the well later on.


 If this were true, no well would ever run dry. The fact is that in many places aquifers are being drawn down much faster than replenishment and that in many places a great quantity of water which likely is 1000's of year old is being consumed. That deep aquifer water probably will not be replenished for human use within any meaningful time for purposes of discussion here. Many wells are drying up, wells are being drilled deeper to access more water, but the shallow aquifers and many deeper aquifers are not being replenished at the rate of use. My conserving of well water, and conservation by others has a lot to do with water being available later on.


> What you're really seeing is a water rights grab where people are claiming river flows for things like fish.


 At face value you may not see merit in water for fish. Fish and other water life, from microbes to whales, are part of a very large ecosystem which we do not well understand. Having water "not available for fish" and other water life has consequences for every living thing. You may choose to disregard that, I do not. The ecosystem we now have works pretty well for life as we know it and I would choose to act reasonably to sustain the environment which favors life as we know it. The future environment may be great for cockroaches, but not for life which works pretty well right now.


> I would be much more concerned about how some of our groundwater sources are being polluted by the petroleum industry. We won't run out of water but the polluted water will cost money to make drinkable and that new burden is heavy.


 We have lots of room for agreement here, and this I think is a main point of the Water Footprint article. Polluted water costs money to clean up, and much of the world right now cannot afford that cost. If and as pollution is exacerbated, which is occurring world-wide, a greater and greater portion of the world's human population will not be able to afford clean water, which is little different than having no water. In addition, while humans can purify water to make it potable, if they can pay the price, other life does not have this option. The consequences of the impact of polluted waters on our ecosystems remains to be seen, but I doubt that it bodes well for most life as we now know it.

You focus on pollution from the petroleum industry and I join you in that focus. Of considerable concern in the agricultural areas is pollution from fertilizers, primarily nitrates, herbicides and pesticides. Growing areas of the country have nitrate pollution which is making water not drinkable, and nitrates, herbicides and pesticides are polluting all surface water around the globe. The impact remains to be seen, but it is an impact I would choose to act reasonably to avoid. In Minnesota, about 87% of the nitrates entering surface waters is from industrial agriculture. We need to eat and drink, and behaviors need to be instituted which allow both to happen. Industrial air borne and point source pollution continues to be a major concern world-wide. We know many of the effects of some of these polluting elements, and we continue to act to do better at reducing these pollutants, but world-wide the pollution is rampant.


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## Highbeam (Dec 17, 2013)

jebatty said:


> If this were true, no well would ever run dry. The fact is that in many places aquifers are being drawn down much faster than replenishment


 
Again you are confused and trying to put words in my mouth. Nobody ever said that wells don't run dry. The point is that your conservation efforts will not determine whether your well runs dry or not. Your particular draw on the acquifer is relatively tiny. The water level in the acquifer is determined by the discharge and recharge rates of the aquifer as a whole. If we assume that an aquifer won't be replenished then the days are numbered and nothing you can do will stop it. 

The entire population's behavior can matter and that is where government policy comes in. This must be the goal of education which can lead to regulation.

We will certainly agree on all the tree hugger principles such as not wasting a resource and that the world would have more fresh water if everyone would stop polluting it or using it. There is a difference between preservation and conservation. I'm sure you know which side I'm on.


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## jebatty (Dec 17, 2013)

> The point is that your conservation efforts will not determine whether your well runs dry or not. Your particular draw on the aquifer is relatively tiny. The water level in the acquifer is determined by the discharge and recharge rates of the aquifer as a whole.


It seems then that you point is that the individual is irrelevant. We will disagree forever on that. My actions influence others who may choose similar action, etc. Every person always counts.


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## begreen (Dec 17, 2013)

Highbeam said:


> It's just money. I can distill water, filter it, chemically treat it, boil it, whatever and it will be drinkable. Politics are usually responsible for what many believe to be a shortage.
> 
> Like any resource, as we consume the low hanging fruit we will have to be smarter. Water is similar to oil in some ways except that the water doesn't get burned, just recyled for future use.


Can you un-radiate it?


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## sesmith (Dec 17, 2013)

The need for water conservation is site specific.  In a densely populated area like NYC and the tri-state metropolitan area, it is essential.  All it takes is a dry summer to make people down there worry about the low reservoir levels.  In parts of the south and out west it is also essential.  Where I live, not so much.  My well is fed by a spring and is only about 8' deep.  In our more water wasting days, we easily filled a 27' round pool with it.  Whether I use 1.5 gallons or 5 gallons per flush really doesn't matter (for the water supply) as the water ends up in the septic drain field and is returned to the aquifer.  There are isolated spots around here where sub divisions have been put in areas that don't have water to support them...again, site specific, and water conservation is a must.

What's more disturbing is what happens when you take a good water supply and contaminate it.  In my opinion, where I live, the greatest danger to our water supply will come from the gas industry.  The millions of gallons used to develop each well will be contaminated and must be disposed of, thereby removing it from the normal water cycle.  Add to that the danger of contaminating the drinking supply, and I think we will regret the damage caused 20 years from now.

The water footprint tool in the original post is kind of interesting as it makes you think about more than just your home water use.  Does it really make sense, for instance, to pick up a head of iceberg lettuce in the supermarket that was grown in water poor California, when you could find a more local source?


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## Highbeam (Dec 18, 2013)

begreen said:


> Can you un-radiate it?


 
With time.


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## begreen (Dec 18, 2013)

Life-times.  

Although most water can be cleaned up, the question is at what cost?  When you have an aquifer polluted due to fracking for example that serves a rural area who pays the cost per household to make the water safe to drink again? Fact is that it's cheaper to truck it in.


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## sesmith (Dec 18, 2013)

begreen said:


> Fact is that it's cheaper to truck it in.



Job creation, no doubt


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## Highbeam (Dec 19, 2013)

begreen said:


> Can you un-radiate it?


 
Also, never seen it. It's like saying, "what about zombies".


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## woodgeek (Dec 19, 2013)

begreen said:


> Can you un-radiate it?



Gotta agree....radionuclei can be removed chemically just like heavy metals.  If the water is tritiated, it is relatively safe since if can't be bioconcentrated, and all the T decays in <100 years.


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## DBoon (Dec 23, 2013)

Just had a chance to dive in on this topic...

I generally find tools like these vastly over-simplified for use by those who really don’t want to spend the time understanding all the complexities of the calculations.  However, what the tool shows is that our water usage does not begin and end with our home water usage, and this fits with all I have read everywhere else.  If you view it through that lens, I think it is a good tool.  If you view it through the lens of “will it tell me my water usage to +/- 1000 gallons per year”, then it is not the right tool.  However, most people have no idea the impact of their everyday decisions, and this tool helps them. 

It’s easy to say “water is cheap and we don’t need to worry about it”, but oil and gasoline were once abundant and cheap and we didn’t worry about those either.  Few would consider them cheap today. Simple conservation can be a cost-effective tool to minimize future costs.  Case in point – NY City in the 1970s used to use something like 1.3 billion gallons of water a day, and 30+ years later the water usage is ~1 billion gallons a day while the population has grown.  Clearly, there was a lot of waste of water.  Aside from a rather humorous Seinfeld episode where nobody could seem to wash the shampoo out of their hair for a week, there are no seeming ill effects to this conservation, and great economic benefits. 

Unfortunately, our human history, worldwide and regardless of economic system, has overall been a “waste first, worry about it later” philosophy. In communist/socialist societies, this was due to corruption, graft, state planning, or just plain stupidity.  In a more “efficient” capitalist society, it is due to the economic discounting of future costs many years out compared to the current (low) cost in the present (based on abundance).  Classical economics always assumes that future costs will be somehow manageable, supply disruptions can be mitigated or an alternative product will be available, and they’ve mostly been right for hundreds of years.  However, as our planet approaches a mind-boggling 10 billion people, and as these people strive to attain living standards similar to our own, it is impossible for me to imagine in my lifetime that these assumed future and manageable costs for wasteful decisions made today will be as low and manageable as we assume.  And then what? There are no do-overs with the planet.  I’d rather play it safe if I only get one chance.


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## Pruning@trunk (Dec 24, 2013)

DBoon said:


> However, as our planet approaches a mind-boggling 10 billion people, and as these people strive to attain living standards similar to our own, it is impossible for me to imagine in my lifetime that these assumed future and manageable costs for wasteful decisions made today will be as low and manageable as we assume.  And then what? There are no do-overs with the planet.  I’d rather play it safe if I only get one chance.




Sounds like you think the world is over populated.  Maybe we should adopt some population control to save the planet?


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## woodgeek (Dec 24, 2013)

Pruning@trunk said:


> Sounds like you think the world is over populated.  Maybe we should adopt some population control to save the planet?



Naah.  Now that everyones here let's figure out how to get get 'em all well-fed, healthy and prosperous in a peaceful world.

Peace on Earth.


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## DBoon (Dec 24, 2013)

Pruning@trunk said:


> Sounds like you think the world is over populated. Maybe we should adopt some population control to save the planet?


Actually didn't say that at all.


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## Pruning@trunk (Dec 25, 2013)

^^^^^ You said people like to waste first then worry about it later. With 10 billion people doing this the planet is going to suffer and there isn't any do-overs.  Obviously you seem to think we have a problem with the "mind-boggling" number of people.

But if I misunderstood what you wrote then maybe you can clear it up b/c I don't want to make ill suspicion of your post, b/c I am very open-minded.


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## hoverwheel (Dec 25, 2013)

The low flow toilet at work has a sensor so it knows to flush when you stand up. It doesn't work very well though. It flushes half a dozen times while simply sitting there.

Sometimes they flush at random with nobody there at all.


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## DBoon (Dec 25, 2013)

What I said was "our human history...has overall been a “waste first, worry about it later” philosophy".  By this statement, I am just indicating what I believe has been the general trend of humans over thousands of years to consume a lot in the present without worrying too much about the future supply.  

Regarding 10 billion people, what I said was:

"as our planet approaches a mind-boggling 10 billion people, and as these people strive to attain living standards similar to our own, it is impossible for me to imagine in my lifetime that these assumed future and manageable costs for wasteful decisions made today will be as low and manageable as we assume."  

What this means is that as we move from 7 to 10 billion people (both are numbers I find mind-boggling, but don't imply that I think there should be population control), there is less room for error in making assumptions about future supply.  I don't believe that future supply of energy, food, raw materials, etc. will be what classical economics predicts it will be (i.e. always a means to achieve supply) or the price won't be an acceptable price (i.e. it will be unaffordable to many).  If, while we grow by 3 billion people, living standards also overall improve for those in the developing world, the problem gets even tougher.  

Regarding "there are no do overs", well, there aren't, in this case.  I can't pick up and move to another planet if things go wrong here.  I advocate that as the most intelligent living creatures on this planet, and likely the only one able to imagine our existence more than a few months ahead of time, we should think ahead a little more and consider the long term ramifications of what we do.


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## Seasoned Oak (Dec 29, 2013)

I did well in diet and transportation mostly because I dont eat a lot of meat and i dont commute.


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