I’m pleased to announce that we’ve chosen a winner at random for the Taking on Water Challenge! Rebecca Rubin will receive an autographed copy of Taking on Water: How One Water Expert Challenged Her Inner Hypocrite, Reduced Her Water Footprint (Without Sacrificing a Toasty Shower), and Found [...]]]>

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve chosen a winner at random for the Taking on Water Challenge! Rebecca Rubin will receive an autographed copy of Taking on Water: How One Water Expert Challenged Her Inner Hypocrite, Reduced Her Water Footprint (Without Sacrificing a Toasty Shower), and Found Nirvana, and a home water conservation kit that includes:

Save A Drop Water Meter

Soil Moisture Meter

Eco-Luxury Low Flow Showerhead

Dual Setting Swivel Faucet Aerator

Low Flow Faucet Aerator

Toilet Tank Bank

Fittingly, Rebecca is the Founder, President and CEO of Marstel-Day, LLC. (www.Marstel-Day.com) a 95-person environmental consulting enterprise with offices in Alexandria and Fredericksburg, VA and Oakland, CA. She established Marstel-Day in 2002 as an expression of her commitment to the conservation of natural resources, especially habitat and open space, energy, water, and the resolution of issues at their intersections. As a result, Marstel-Day is a conservation-minded company that provides expertise to clients facing environmental, energy, land use and natural resource conservation issues.

Rebecca is clearly a fellow Waterkeeper. She has both dedicated her career to working on water and related issues, and is taking action in her personal life to reduce her footprint. When asked about the role of individual actions as they relate to our larger impact on water resources, Rebecca said:

“Water is the foremost issue of our day and age; questions about the viability of water quantity and quality are enormous…we need to make every drop count. To this end, each of us must be vigilant in our stance towards taking individual actions to reduce our water consumption and our negative impacts on water quality.”

Congratulations, Rebecca and thank you for all your hard work! Thanks again to all those who participated in the Taking on Water Challenge and to Sasquatch Books for their sponsorship.

Water is essential to our life on Earth. Comprising up to 85% of our body’s [...]]]> Today, March 22, is United Nations’ World Water Day, and 2013 is the International Year of Water Cooperation. First initiated in 1993, World Water Day focuses attention on the importance of freshwater and advocates for sustainable water management.

Water is essential to our life on Earth. Comprising up to 85% of our body’s mass and vital to metabolic processes, water quenches our thirst, sustains us, cleanses us. Yet, access to clean freshwater is a growing global challenge. This past year brought extreme drought, low snow packs, and record low stream flows in a number of river systems. In this country, we see Las Vegas waging water war with the open ranch lands to the north, Atlanta in protracted battles with downstream states over its primary water supply at Lake Lanier, and water tables beneath the San Joaquin Valley—the source of 40 percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables—dropping. A recent study by the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) suggests that by mid-century, half the counties in the U.S. will be facing water scarcity. And, these problems are not going away anytime soon.

Global population has grown to over 7 billion people and demand for water has escalated. Today, we use water not only to satisfy basic needs for food, drinking water and sanitation, but also to produce power and manufacture untold consumer goods. Growing global demand for food and consumer goods is putting tremendous pressure on water resources, lessening the volume, quality, and consistency of available water, and causing a loss of biodiversity and resiliency in ecosystems of all types. Water overuse, river fragmentation, draining of wetlands, and pollution are all diminishing the ability of these systems to provide a range of ecosystem services—flood control, clean drinking water and clean air, habitat, decomposition of wastes, food production, pharmaceuticals, and recreational and spiritual benefits.

It’s easy to marginalize our individual roles in these problems and, instead, find fault with government policies, corporate behavior, and farming practices. Yet, taken together, our aggregate behavior is the source of these problems. An individual home can waste 10,000 gallons of water a year to leaking fixtures; as a nation, we lose one trillion gallons of water to leaks. We buy 450 million pair of blue jeans every year, each of which requires about 2,200 gallons of water to produce, mostly to grow cotton for denim. That’s a total of 990 billion gallons of water, or enough to provide copious domestic water supplies to almost 10 billion people. We consume 25 billion pounds of beef annually, requiring 46 trillion gallons of water to produce. And the list goes on.

While this may all seem distressing, it also implies a potent truth. As citizens and consumers, we have the power to change our own behavior. We can become more conscious about how much water we use directly in our homes and we can make choices about what and how much we purchase, influencing the types of products and services sold in the market. All of this can lead to increased water use efficiency and decreased water demand. And, like most things in life, cooperation between and amongst people, communities, and nations must start with owning and taking responsibility for our individual actions. As Americans, let’s honor the International Year of Water Cooperation by stepping up and leading a global effort to cooperatively steward and share our freshwater resources.

This week we are concluding the Taking on Water Challenge! During the month of February, contest participants undertook a new action each week to reduce their water footprints, saving up to 6,054 gallons of water. This week we are asking that you please let us know how this challenge changed the way [...]]]>

This week we are concluding the Taking on Water Challenge! During the month of February, contest participants undertook a new action each week to reduce their water footprints, saving up to 6,054 gallons of water. This week we are asking that you please let us know how this challenge changed the way you think about and use water, and how much water you’ve saved. We’d also love to hear what other water saving actions you might be planning for the future. Thank you for joining in!

On or about March 15, 2013, we will be drawing a contest winner, who will receive a copy of Taking on Water and a water reduction kit for his or her home (Approximate Retail Value $130). Stay tuned.

See introductory information on the Taking on Water Challenge: Reduce your Water Footprint here, the Week 1 Challenge: Eat Less Meat here, the Week 2 Challenge: Waste Less Food here, the Week 3 Challenge: Conserve Energy here, and the Week 4 Challenge: Fix Leaks here. To enter to win the Taking on Water Challenge, pledge to decrease your water footprint by leaving a comment.

*****

To Enter

Full official contest rules and guidelines are here. Contest begins January 29, 2013. Entries must be received no later than March 11, 2013, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

• Enter for the chance to win a copy of Taking on Water and a water reduction kit for your home (Approximate Retail Value $130).

• No purchase necessary.

• Open to residents of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia, ages 18 or older.

• Contest begins January 29, 2013. Entries must be received no later than March 11, 2013, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

• The winner will be selected on or about March 15, 2013.

• Void where prohibited by law.

Entries must be made in the comments section on Wendy Pabich’s blog, www.waterdeva.com. Entries must include the following (Incomplete entries will not be considered):

▪ Name (first and last)

▪ Email Address

▪ A brief comment pledging to decrease your water footprint

Optional: A link to a blog post or photograph can be included, but is not necessary for entry.

It takes tremendous volumes of water to produce our food. In fact, in the U.S., agriculture accounts for some 80 percent of our country’s consumptive water use. This means that when we waste food, we waste water. A recent study in the U.K. calculated that embedded water in food waste within the [...]]]>

It takes tremendous volumes of water to produce our food. In fact, in the U.S., agriculture accounts for some 80 percent of our country’s consumptive water use. This means that when we waste food, we waste water. A recent study in the U.K. calculated that embedded water in food waste within the country accounted for one and a half times the volume of water people actually used in their homes.

Estimates of U.S. food waste range from 14 to 50 percent of all food produced for domestic sale and consumption. Much of this food is tossed in the garbage because it is past its sell-by date (which is often mistakenly believed to represent the date food should be eaten by), not as fresh as it once was, or because consumers purchased more food than they could eat and allowed food to spoil.

The implications of our carelessness are rather stunning: these foods end up in landfills, where they produce untold amounts of potent methane, a gas twenty-three times more effective in trapping heat in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. (Indeed, landfills account for 34 percent of our total methane emissions.) Wasted food also means wasted money, with the average family of four losing $590 each year to food waste. We are also unnecessarily depleting soils and using tons of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides for foods that are never eaten. It is estimated that fully one-quarter of U.S. water consumption is used to produce this wasted food.

Finally, as estimated in a study by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the energy required to produce this discarded food is on the order of three hundred million barrels of oil a year. As reported in New Scientist magazine, this is (now hold onto your hat!) more than is extracted annually from the oil and gas reserves off our shores.

You can change this by making a shopping list, buying only what you need, using up what’s in the fridge and the pantry (with lots of creative recipes available to use up wilting vegetables), and serving smaller amounts. For food that does go to waste, compost it to return nutrients and energy to the soil rather than sending it to the landfill, where it will decompose to methane and carbon dioxide, further contributing to global change.

By not wasting food this week, you can reduce your water footprint by about 667 gallons. By continuing this practice, you can save nearly 35,000 gallons of water in a year.

Follow these links for more discussion about:

The Implications of Food Waste

The Water Footprint of Food Waste in the U.K.

Ideas for Using Up Foods on the Edge:

9 Foods You Can Bring Back from the Dead

Recipes for Leftovers

See introductory information on the Taking on Water Challenge: Reduce your Water Footprint here and the Week 1 Challenge: Eat Less Meat here. To enter to win the Taking on Water Challenge, pledge to decrease your water footprint by leaving a comment.

*****

To Enter

Full official contest rules and guidelines are here. Contest begins January 29, 2013. Entries must be received no later than March 11, 2013, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

• Enter for the chance to win a copy of Taking on Water and a water reduction kit for your home (Approximate Retail Value $130).

• No purchase necessary.

• Open to residents of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia, ages 18 or older.

• Contest begins January 29, 2013. Entries must be received no later than March 11, 2013, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

• The winner will be selected on or about March 15, 2013.

• Void where prohibited by law.

Entries must be made in the comments section on Wendy Pabich’s blog, www.waterdeva.com. Entries must include the following (Incomplete entries will not be considered):

▪ Name (first and last)

▪ Email Address

▪ A brief comment pledging to decrease your water footprint

Optional: A link to a blog post or photograph can be included, but is not necessary for entry.

Estimates vary, but data from the Water Footprint Network suggests that the annual water footprint of the average American consumer is more than 750,000 gallons per year, nearly 60 percent of which is used in the production of our food. America’s startlingly high water footprint is primarily due to high per capita [...]]]>

Estimates vary, but data from the Water Footprint Network suggests that the annual water footprint of the average American consumer is more than 750,000 gallons per year, nearly 60 percent of which is used in the production of our food. America’s startlingly high water footprint is primarily due to high per capita consumption of meat and industrial products.

According to the Water Footprint Network, it requires about 1,799 gallons to produce one pound of beef, 468 gallons per pound of chicken, 576 gallons per pound of pork, and 880 gallons per gallon of milk. Copious volumes of water are needed to grow feed for animals, and then additional water is used to care for animals, process meat, and distribute and sell animal products. By contrast, raising fruit, vegetables, and grains requires a fraction of the water. Carrots require only 6.5 gallons of water per pound; apples, nearly 100 gallons per pound; peas, 10.2 gallons per pound; blueberries, 13.8 gallons per cup; and potatoes, 119 gallons per pound.

By avoiding red meat for two days this week, you can reduce your water footprint by about 953 gallons. By continuing this practice, you can save nearly 50,000 gallons of water in a year.

Follow these links for more discussion about:

The Average American Diet and Its Water Footprint

The Environmental Implications of Meat Production

How We Use Water for Food

See introductory information on the Taking on Water Challenge: Reduce your Water Footprint here. To enter to win the Taking on Water Challenge, pledge to decrease your water footprint by leaving a comment.

*****

To Enter

Full official contest rules and guidelines are here. Contest begins January 29, 2013. Entries must be received no later than March 11, 2013, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

• Enter for the chance to win a copy of Taking on Water and a water reduction kit for your home (Approximate Retail Value $130).

• No purchase necessary.

• Open to residents of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia, ages 18 or older.

• Contest begins January 29, 2013. Entries must be received no later than March 11, 2013, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

• The winner will be selected on or about March 15, 2013.

• Void where prohibited by law.

Entries must be made in the comments section on Wendy Pabich’s blog, www.waterdeva.com. Entries must include the following (Incomplete entries will not be considered):

▪ Name (first and last)

▪ Email Address

▪ A brief comment pledging to decrease your water footprint

Optional: A link to a blog post or photograph can be included, but is not necessary for entry.

Water is the new oil, right? Not only do we each directly consume water every day for drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning and tending our lawns, we also use water indirectly, as water “embedded” in the products and services we buy. Thus, in the same way we each have a carbon footprint we [...]]]>

Water is the new oil, right? Not only do we each directly consume water every day for drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning and tending our lawns, we also use water indirectly, as water “embedded” in the products and services we buy. Thus, in the same way we each have a carbon footprint we also have a water footprint. A water footprint is the total volume of freshwater used directly and indirectly to produce the goods and services consumed by an individual, community, company or nation. This includes the amount of “green water”, or rainwater consumed in the production process and to grow crops, “blue water”, or surface and groundwater consumed, and “greywater”, the amount of freshwater polluted as a result of the process.

To put this in perspective, a cup of coffee requires about 37 gallons of water to produce; it takes 6.5 gallons to grow a pound of carrots and 108 gallons to grow a pound of corn; 1,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, 2,200 gallons for a pair of blue jeans, 25 gallons for a kilowatt-hour of electricity. The average person in the United States consumes more than 750,000 gallons of water each year via the products and services they purchase—representing the highest per capita water footprint in the world. By contrast, nations like Guatemala, Kenya, and Afghanistan have water footprints less than 200,000 gallons per person per year.

During the month of February, the Taking on Water Challenge will issue a new charge each Tuesday to help you reduce your water footprint. Challenges will be straight-forward and relatively easy to achieve. Along with each task, you’ll learn why your choice is important, and how much water you can save if you undertake the pledge for a week—or better yet, make it permanent. By the end of the month, your combined actions could save more than 1,500 gallons per week. If you stick with these changes, you can save over 6,000 gallons each month or nearly 80,000 gallons of water in a year’s time. Along the way, we’ll provide you with additional resources and water saving ideas you can bring to your life. We hope that once you figure out how easy it can be to be water wise, you’ll put what you learn to good use. At the end of the month, we’ll draw a winner for a Taking on Water prize!

For more background on our water footprints, start here with my Water Deva Cheat Sheet and 12 Ways to Reduce Your Water Footprint. And, please help us spread the word through your social media networks. Every drop counts!

See the first challenge, posted February 5, 2013, Week 1 – Eat Less Meat here. See the second challenge, posted February 12, 2013, Week 2 – Waste Less Food here. To enter to win the Taking on Water Challenge, pledge to decrease your water footprint by leaving a comment.

*****

To Enter

Full official contest rules and guidelines are here.  Contest begins January 29, 2013. Entries must be received no later than March 11, 2013, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

• Enter for the chance to win a copy of Taking on Water and a water reduction kit for your home (Approximate Retail Value $130).

• No purchase necessary.

• Open to residents of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia, ages 18 or older.

• Contest begins January 29, 2013. Entries must be received no later than March 11, 2013, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

• The winner will be selected on or about March 15, 2013.

• Void where prohibited by law.

Entries must be made in the comments section on Wendy Pabich’s blog, www.waterdeva.com. Entries must include the following (Incomplete entries will not be considered):

▪    Name (first and last)

▪    Email Address

▪    A brief comment pledging to decrease your water footprint

Optional: A link to a blog post or photograph can be included, but is not necessary for entry.

by Wendy Pabich

“Water is getting scarce. This year has brought extreme drought, low snow packs, and record low stream flows in a number of river systems. We see Las Vegas waging water war with the open ranch [...]]]> I’m pleased to share my recent article for Random House’s academic blog, Debate this Book:

by Wendy Pabich

“Water is getting scarce. This year has brought extreme drought, low snow packs, and record low stream flows in a number of river systems. We see Las Vegas waging water war with the open ranch lands to the north, Atlanta in protracted battles with downstream states over its primary water supply at Lake Lanier, and water tables beneath the San Joaquin Valley—the source of 40 percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables—dropping. A recent study by the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) suggests that by mid-century, half the counties in the U.S. will be facing water scarcity.” Read more…

This is my second guest blog post for Weather Underground, where I’ll be posting a series on the global water crisis over the next several weeks. Weather Underground is the first internet weather service, committed to delivering the most reliable, accurate [...]]]>

Trends in Water Use in the United States, 1950 to 2005 (http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wateruse-trends.html

This is my second guest blog post for Weather Underground, where I’ll be posting a series on the global water crisis over the next several weeks. Weather Underground is the first internet weather service, committed to delivering the most reliable, accurate weather information possible. I’ll also be starting a “water challenge” in the upcoming weeks, co-hosted by Weather Underground, to raise awareness of water usage and to help us all lower our personal water usage—it can be done! Stay tuned.

Why Does Water Conservation Matter?

In my first blog in this series, reader commented that s/he lived at the top of the watershed, and asked whether conserving water matters. If s/he conserved, the water would be used by downstream agriculture and if s/he didn’t conserve, the water would end up back in the river anyway. Further, does conservation just encourage continued development? Does conserving water here allow someone in Pakistan or India to have more water?

These are all good questions. There are a number of reasons to believe that taking responsibility for your own choices and behavior makes a difference. I’ll discuss a few here. We know, for instance, that water use efficiency in the U.S. has continued to improve. National water use data from the U.S. Geological Survey from 1950 through 2005 (Graph 1) show that total water withdrawals for all uses, including domestic, irrigation and power production, has more than doubled—from 180 billion gallons per day to 410 billion gallons per day—while population has increased from 150 to 300 million in the same time period. Read more…