Water, water everywhere, but ......

      Looking out through the window at all the raised umbrellas moving up and down Derby Road, as the rain patters against the glass, it's difficult to comprehend that water is increasingly becoming a scarce commodity.
Really?
Nottingham always seems to be a pretty wet city and there's a massive river running straight through the middle of it, and every time I turn on the tap to fill the kettle there's always an instant supply of fresh, clean water, so how could it be that I need to think about the impact of water risk in the UK?

Water is one of the Earth's most valuable resources, and one that we probably take for granted in the UK. I suppose that's because we have a steady, regular rainfall throughout the year, rather than see-sawing between dry seasons and wet seasons. Whenever we do get heavy rain it runs off into rivers and eventually out to sea, rather than seeping into the ground to top up the water table.

I also suppose we don't always think about how much we rely on or use water. Of course, we know we use water for drinking, taking a shower or bath, doing the washing or cleaning the car. But what about our virtual water use? Every product we use every day will have used water in its production, packaging and transport before it even reaches us. For example, have you considered how much water is used to produce our food?

Did you know it takes 12 litres of water to produce just one tomato? Wow! And it takes 650 litres of water (54 buckets) to produce one chicken breast. 1kg of chocolate consumes over 17,000 litres of water, whereas 3,000 litres are needed to produce 1kg of cheese (source IME). And when you consider how much food we waste .....
Analysis by the Uk's Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) has found that as much as 50% of all food produced globally ends up as waste, blaming unnecessarily strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one-free offers and consumer demand for cosmetically perfect produce. That's a lot of wasted food (don't get me started on world hunger) and a lot of wasted water used in its production. Some major supermarkets are also guilty of senseless waste by rejecting fruit and vegetables that do not meet their exacting standards for size, shape and colour.

In 2014 the World Economic Forum placed water crisis third on its list of global risks when looking at the likelihood and potential impact water shortages would bring economically, environmentally and socially. Water risk is not just about over-use and scarcity, but also about water pollution and water waste, and we should all individually, and collectively, think carefully about how we use water and how to avoid wasting it.

We've all heard about carbon footprints, but now we can assess out water footprint also. There will be more on this in future posts :-)