According to an article found on the University of Minnesota Extension’s website on farming and irrigation, successful strawberry production in the Upper Midwest can be attributed to the use of good irrigation systems. A good irrigation system is conservative in water use, avoiding over and under watering of the crops. For strawberry crops, they take about three months to produce their fruits, including harvesting time. Strawberry plants require 1-inch of water a week as they are first planted, and then about 1-2 inches of water a week during the time that they are in season. Being that there are about 4 weeks in a month, and strawberry season is about 3 months, the total amount of water a strawberry plant would need is about 18 inches of water. In a crop, there can be about 120 producing strawberry plants, which would mean that 2160 inches of water are necessary for a crop. To go even further, converting inches to liters, a crop of 120 strawberry plants would use 35.4 liters of water in a season. 

One of the biggest sources of water waste in the United States comes from taking incredibly long showers and using baths. On average, Americans take showers with a flow rate of 2.1 gallons per minute. If the regular person takes a 10-15 minute shower, twice a day, they waste about 63 gallons of water. If the average American cut down their shower use to 5 minutes per shower, they would be using only about 21 gallons a day for their shower. That saves about 41 gallons. Stepping even further, Americans can shorten their showers even further by shutting off the water when lathering their hair and body and only washing their hair every so often. 

Many people enjoy consuming bottled water over tap water because it is marketed to seem more desirable and a cleaner alternative. Some people also like the convenience of buying water to go, instead of having to carry around a reusable bottle to fill up. Asking some of my friends, their responses to plastic water-bottle use a week range from around 6-7 bottles. Being that there are about 2,040 students on Union’s campus and using this measurement, we could say that about 12,282 water bottles are used per week, and about 2.2 million bottles a year (180 school days a year). It takes a 1/4 of a liter of oil to produce one plastic water bottle. Multiplying this quantity by the number of water bottles consumed a year, it takes 550,000 liters to produce all of the water bottles used.

Resources:

https://extension.umn.edu/strawberry-farming/irrigating-strawberries

https://pacinst.org/publication/bottled-water-fact-sheet/