Agriculture uses an incredible amount of water each year. Meat from cows alone uses a global average of 15 400 m ³ /tons of water (“Water footprint of crop and animal products: a comparison”). This number increases when considering the farming process. Agriculture isn’t the only culprit for water use and waste. The EPA states that an average U.S. “family can waste 180 gallons [of water] per week or 9400 gallons annually” (“Statistics and Facts | US EPA”).  It is common for American families to water their lawns which is an incredible waste of water. To put it in perspective, watering an average size lawn for 20 minutes daily uses the same about of water as 800 showers or a year worth of showers for an average family (“Statistics and Facts | US EPA”). If we stop watering lawns which is not a necessity and rather just for appearance, we could save a large amount of water. the average shower uses 17.2 gallons of water so every family who waters their lawn would be saving 13,760 gallons annually (“Shower In an average home”).

I think that bottled water is popular because it is convenient and people trust it more than they may trust the water from their faucet. Along with this, some people don’t like the taste of the water at Union, especially so they opt for bottled. I estimate that 1,000 students on campus drink about two, one-liter bottles of bottled water a day from the bookstore. If we are on campus for 210 days per year I estimate that the campus consumes 420,000 bottles of water each academic year. It takes 1/4 liter of oil to produce a liter bottle, therefore 1.1 x 10^5 of oil is used to produce the water bottles that Union consumes. The Most popular water at Union is essential which is from WA. It takes around 18,000 gallons of fuel to fly from WA to JFK and another 8.66 gallons to drive from JFK to Union if the vehicle is getting 20 miles to the gallon. Therefore it takes roughly 18008.66 gallons of fuel to transport water to our campus.