Water and waste – or is it basically waste of water?
I’m starting of with a conservation related topic – I apologize to those who must be feeling kind of tired reading about this, but I’ve tried to find a different angle on this particular topic, so if you can stomach it out, you might be in for some new tidbits of information at least.
A papaya from my fridge, now immortalized as a bad example
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You might have heard or read about this before – the world is coming to an end…well, everything is relative and yes, in several billion years the Sun is going to expand and engulf our dear old Earth and that will be it – I hope you are not to surprised by this – but right now, within the next 40 years, the population on this planet will be faced with several big challenges, the first being the population itself. Currently, we are 7 billion people happily living here on the third rock from the Sun, but in 2050 we will be another 2 billion people here – another 2 billion people who need to eat, to drink and in general live under decent and acceptable conditions…
So here we are right now: sitting comfortably in front of our computers, quite likely with a cup of hot mocha or a coke and a snack to starve of any impending hunger pangs, while we read about all of these horrible and tragic things. As the writer, sitting in the exact same situation, allow me to ask this: is your beverage getting flaccid and heading for the sink? Is the snack a bit too much and most likely heading for the trash bin or maybe the compost bin if you are environmentally conscious? If the answer is no, then I applaud your diligence and sensible choice of snack size – but if the answer is yes, I am not going to scold you – I’m not even mad with you, because I’ve done the exact same thing repeatedly – I am not an angel, but I am trying to change my habits.
Waste – and especially the waste of food and water – is at the core of the coming challenges. Obtaining resources for another 2 billion people is not going to be easy – we can’t magically create enough new agricultural areas to supply them, unless we continue to cut down the rain forests and other unique eco-systems, and even if we did, I am sorry to tell you that at some point, we are going to run out of arable land on this planet. Let’s take a look at the U.S. – almost half of the food supply worth over $48.3 billion is lost each year! But U.S is not the only one – on average, all over this planet, 40% of the food resources are lost – either as post-production (consumer and retail waste of processed food – that would be you, me and our local stores) or pre-production (lost on the fields due to poor harvesting methods).
Notice the difference between industrialized and not so developed regions
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This boils down even further – it’s not about wasted food, it is actually about wasted water. Only 2% of all water on this dear planet of ours is fresh water and returning to the U.S., 70% of all fresh water consumption is found in agriculture, mainly as irrigation. Water is used to produce what you eat, water is essential in what you drink and then the average four person American family discards 112 lbs. of these items each month, which amounts to wasting 10.5 trillion gallons of water a year nationwide – enough to meet the water needs of 500 million people. Food items which typically ends up in the landfill where it will produce 4.5 times as much CO2 as it decomposes…and while I’ve been writing this, the two leaky faucets I have in my apartment have dripped the equivalent of a gallon, which would amount to about 6000 cubic feet of fresh water a year – straight down the drain without serving a single purpose!
Our pre-compost-material-handler made out of a recycled milk container
How do we solve this? Well, don’t Supersize your junk food, just because it’s only another 99 cents – trust me when I tell you that there is plenty of nourishment in the regular size.
Fix your leaky faucets and while you are at it, check the toilet as well – what’s out of sight, is out of mind and toilets are notorious at wasting water.
Look in your freezer – how much was bought as bulk at the local grocery store and has now been sitting in the freezer for more than three months, building up hoar frost and most likely headed for the trash can?
RECYCLE, COMPOST, EAT WHAT YOU BUY!
There is an oodleplex of things that you as a consumer can do, and they all matter – it might feel small in the greater picture, but if all American households could cut the food waste with 50%, we would save more than 5 trillion gallons of water – rivaling the content of more than 7500 olympic-size swimming pools, another number that is slightly mind numbing so let me put it like this: that would equal 3.65 square miles worth of six feet deep swimming pool. If we as consumers do our job and if we provide knowledge and technology to countries that experience pre-consumer loss, then the grim future everyone is wailing about could be a lot less grim – Oh, there is still plenty of issues left to be handled (population growth still being a hot topic here), but providing and ultimately improving the standards for the population that is bound to come is a good start.
Here is a link to the full report by FAO on food waste and loss, if you feel like reading the whole thing.
