Smart Water at Home, More Water Abroad

David Beckman, NRDC, Los Angeles
Posted on Tuesday 16th March 2010

Monday was World Water Day - a day recognized by the United Nations to draw attention to the growing water crisis.

When you work on water for a living, every day sort of feels like “water day.” And it is easy to forget that while we in the U.S. have serious water problems of our own, some of which have been vividly illustrated in a terrific series in the New York Times this year and last, many of these problems pale in comparison to those in other parts of the world.

But there is a connection (many actually) between the choices we make in the U.S. and how water is used across the globe. By thinking about how we all use water at home and in our daily lives, we can help communities in the developing world get safer drinking water.

Susan Carpenter, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, does a great job of illustrating this in a recent post called, “Trying to Undress My ‘Water Footprint.” She explains that experts are beginning to measure the total volume of freshwater used to make everyday products like clothes, coffee, and hamburgers.

Carpenter discovered, for instance, that to create the four cups of coffee she drinks every day (about one cup less than me most days) requires 37 gallons of water to create, from growing the beans to processing them, and shipping them. One pound of her beloved steak, meanwhile, takes 1,581 gallons of water.

Carpenter’s blog makes it clear that even while she is making great efforts to reduce her water use here in the LA Basin - by installing gray-water systems to reuse laundry water and setting up rain water cisterns - some of her consumer choices still have implications for the water-taxed nations where her coffee, denim, and burgers come from.

But that's no reason to feel overwhelmed. Remember that small, moderate alterations can make a big different. By occasionally eating a veggie burger instead of a hamburger, you can save 750 gallons per patty.

“More conscious living and substitution, rather than sacrifice, are the prevailing ideas with the water footprint,” Carpenter writes.

As the world pays special attention on Monday to the indispensable role of water in all of our lives, that’s a great reminder. Each of us can make a real difference by making our water footprints a little lighter.

This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard.

David Beckman is an attorney and a Co-Director of NRDC's Water Program in Los Angeles. NRDC is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the environment, people and animals. NRDC was founded in 1970 and is comprised of more than 300 lawyers, scientists and policy experts, with more than one million members and e-activists.

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