- One example of livestock that uses water: Goats consume: 3 gallons/ 1 day x 365 days/1 year x .0038 tonnes/ 1 gallon= 4.161 tonnes/ year per goat
- If a typical gardener uses a sprinkler gushing 12,240 gallons/ 1 monthly x .0038 tonnes/ 1 gallon x 1 year / 12 months= the Gardner will use 3.876 tonnes / year
- Water waste could be reduced by doing laundry more infrequently (each load requires about 12.5-19.6 gallons per load depending on the washer and according to prudentreviews.com), adding timers to sprinkler systems (where according to bigsprinkler.com it takes 27,000 gallons to irrigate 1 acre of land) and especially by eating less beef which according to denverwater.org requires 1,847 gallons of water to produce.
- Bottled water is a matter of convenience and one of appealing marketing. Our susceptibility to innovative marketing techniques makes us prone to consuming water-on-the-go. To estimate the student consumption of bottled water, assuming no student is using the hydration stations and only acquiring water from bottled water the following “ideal” situation may arise:
- There are 2050 students at Union, 47% women, 53% men
- 3.7 L/day per man x 1 gallon/3.785 L x 365 days/year = 356.80317 gallons per year per man
- 1086 men at Union
- Approx. 387,488.243 gallons per year per Union men
- 2.7 L/day per woman x 1 gallon/3.785 L x 365 days/year = 260.369881 gallons per year per woman
- 964 women at Union
- Approx. 250,996.565 gallons per year per Union women ideally
- It takes one liter of oil to prod. one bottle of water,
Take the Distance: 7,933 mi xWeight: 2916.247 tons x 161.8g of Co2/1 ton x 1 mi = 3743176249.57 g of Co2 it takes to ship in a 747 Boeing, with 2 passengers at roughly 197 lbs, with roughly 650,000 gallons of water to hydrate Union College.
Other works not already cited:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92222327
To add on to what you said about sprinklers and water waste – I also read that less water is wasted when sprinklers go on at dawn or dusk because the cooler temperatures at those times mean less water evaporates.
Thank you for sharing this numerical information. It clearly shows the effect in water in other places and union
I think that sharing the huge numbers is very effective in visualizing how much water is really used. It is easy to say that “we use a lot of water”, but it is better to find out exactly how much we actually used
It’s amazing how much water is used in a day. Good information man.
Wow seeing the math about water bottle usage and water usage in gallons for Union students is really striking. This gives a concrete example of how much water is used solely for the sake of marketing and convenience for Union students.
These information has a lot of potential in changing the way we interact with environmental advocacy on campus. knowing the data means acknowledging the positive/negative you have towards the environment on campus