President of the Water Environment Federation
I'm honored to post the very first blog for the Water Environment Federation, and we hope it’s the beginning of many conversations that will get folks thinking and talking about water. Water was definitely all the buzz last week at WEFTEC.08™ in Chicago, where 2008 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate Professor John Anthony Allan,
of King’s College London, was the keynote speaker who inspired so many with his comments on virtual water, including yours truly.The idea of virtual water--basically how much water is needed to produce the food, clothes, and other goods and services we use every day—is a whole new way of looking at water conservation and sustainability. Much as ‘carbon footprints’ define amounts of energy consumption that can be reduced to improve the environment, virtual water helps define our individual water consumption in terms of water footprints. It’s not at all like the ways we are used to thinking and talking about water.
Like many of us in this business, I’ve spent much of my professional life talking about water conservation in terms of taking shorter showers, turning off water when you brush your teeth, minimizing outdoor water use and not using your toilet as a trashcan. These ideas are readily shared when we talk about water conservation, but despite our constant education and outreach, I’m not sure people are really thinking about all the water they use, much less changing their behavior. But here is an idea - what if water quality experts start talking about smaller water footprints instead of shorter showers? I wonder what impact we may have in affecting people’s “water behavior” if we started doing this?
I encourage you to visit http://www.waterfootprint.org to find out that water footprint size varies depending on many things including lifestyle, product choices, even nationality. According to the Water Footprint Network, in China the annual water footprint is 700 cubic meters per person versus 2500 cubic meters per person in the United States. Some of that difference relates to products created with domestic water resources versus products created using water from outside the country.
There are other considerations such as diet, and we like our hamburgers!It takes 16,000 liters of water to produce just 1 kilogram of beef. So if you have a salad for lunch instead of a hamburger, you can reduce your water footprint (and save a few calories in the process!) It’s all about understanding how the choices you make impact the water we have, and it’s time to get the conversational ball rolling down the road to a greener, more sustainable future!
Meanwhile I invite you to visit http://www.waterfootprint.org and find out more about what it takes to reduce your own water footprint. And I ask you to share your comments and ideas for reducing personal water footprints here on the WEF WaterBlog.
