Farming for the Future is dedicated to the education of environmental and social impacts that come with sustainable agriculture, and how food insecurity affects us all.
In the fight against climate change and the push towards a more sustainable earth, you’ve likely heard of what your carbon footprint is, but what about your water footprint? How much water do you think you use a day?
It may seem surprising, but you most likely use at least 1,000 gallons of water every day. (The average American uses 2,220 gallons of water per day.)
Find out what your water footprint is here, and let’s go over why it may look so unexpectedly high!
What Comprises Your Water footprint?
Your water footprint is “the amount of freshwater utilized in the production or supply of the goods and services used by a particular person or group.” This can either be made up of direct or indirect usage.
Direct water usage is probably what you most think about when analyzing your water usage. It’s the water that is used when you turn on a faucet or a hose for water. Some other daily examples include brushing your teeth, showering, flushing the toilet, washing a car, or watering a garden.
The main rule of thumb is that your water usage is direct when you can see it.
Indirect water usage, on the other hand, can be a bit more complicated. Indirect water is invisible or more commonly known as “virtual water.” It is the water “hidden” in the products and processes of the things people may buy, and it accounts for the majority of water in your water footprint.
Think about how much water is used to grow the food you eat from when it was only a seed, or the water used to make the clothes you wear on your back.
Many people don’t realize that water is used in almost every step of the process for most things you interact with daily. If you’re buying an ear of corn, think about how much water went into irrigating the crop; how much water was used to process and manufacture it; how much water was used to transport it from the farm to the grocery store you’re about to buy it from.
Virtual water is all around us if we look a little too closely, and it can be very telling of how and why your water footprint may be a lot higher than you initially thought.
What Uses The Most Virtual Water?
Out of everything, you might be surprised to learn that the biggest contributor to your high water footprint is the food you eat.
Water used for agriculture irrigation accounts for nearly 65 percent of the world’s freshwater withdrawals. In the U.S alone, agriculture is responsible for eighty percent of all water consumed.
The reason the water footprint of food is so big has to do with the three parts of a water footprint: the blue, green, and grey water components. Each part represents the volume of water consumed, evaporated, and polluted when an item of consumption is produced.
- Blue water is the amount of surface water and groundwater used, either directly or through evaporation, to produce an item. For something like agriculture, this predominantly refers to irrigation.
- Green water is the amount of rainwater required to make an item. In agriculture, this is the precipitation used to water and grow crops.
- Grey water is the amount of freshwater required to dilute the wastewater pollution generated in manufacturing to maintain water quality, dictated by government-mandated standards. Think of farm runoff from crop fields.
Water footprints are disproportionately high for animal products such as meat, dairy, and eggs because irrigated or rain-fed animal feed (grains or forage), typically have large blue and green water footprints.
On average, it takes about 1,800 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef. To put things into perspective, studies have shown that it takes roughly one hundred calories of grain to produce three calories worth of beef.
Take a look at how many liters of virtual water is used in some everyday items:
What Can You Do To Lower Your Water Footprint?
Fortunately, there are two ways and a number of things you can do to lower your water footprint.
To lessen your direct water footprint, just try to physically use less water.
Reducing your water usage can be done in several small, pretty straightforward ways:
- Take shorter showers
- Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth
- Use water-saving toilets
- Install a water-saving showerhead
- Take shorter showers
- Only wash your clothes when necessary
- Useless water in the garden and when cleaning
To minimize your indirect water footprint, make small lifestyle changes. For example, you can make food substitutions:
- Eat less meat
You don’t have to go fully vegan or vegetarian to make a big difference in your water footprint. Think about it this way: you save more water by not eating a pound of meat than you do by not showering for six months. For those thinking of going meat-free, studies have shown that a healthy meat-free diet could help reduce your water footprint by up to a whopping 55 percent.
- Switch from coffee to tea
Again, caffeine-lovers (like myself) don’t need to cut coffee out of their life completely. But the problem is that coffee, from the way it’s grown to the way we brew it to the way we drink it, isn’t all that great for the environment. It takes approximately thirty-seven gallons of water to produce a single eight-ounce cup of coffee, compared to the eight gallons needed for the same cup of tea. So maybe the next time it’s seven in the morning, and you’re feeling drowsy, make a nice cup of green tea to wake you up.
- Avoid processed foods.
Processed foods like chips, cereals, and microwave meals require more water to produce than whole foods. While the water footprint of produce like fruits and vegetables is made up entirely of water needed to grow, processed foods require additional virtual water for things like cleaning the food and machinery, pre-cooking the food, producing fuel for delivery, and making packaging materials. Therefore, a good rule of thumb at the grocery store is to spend most shopping time on the market’s edge to find whole foods like fruits and vegetables, and (hopefully) pasture-raised, sustainable meats.
- Eat more local
Food choices heavily impact water supplies where the food was originally grown, and generally, that original location is super far away from where people buy it. Eating more locally can benefit the surrounding waters by keeping water used to grow food within the watershed. This helps to cut down on “water exports” from across the country or the globe while also protecting the quality of water within the watershed as well. Shopping at your local farmer’s market or simply researching your local restaurants are small acts that can help save a lot of virtual water in the process of consuming food.
- Eat more organic foods
Organic farms don’t use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, protecting water bodies from pollutants that may runoff from crop fields. If you can do so, buying organically-grown products can help support farms that reduce agricultural water pollution, which means those products have a smaller grey water footprint!