Blog Action Day

As part of the innitiative to inspire global discussion about the same issue, this year topic in all blogs is Water. Doing a litte research around the internet I found out a few interesting and alarming things about water, that to be honest i did not know until I started researching for this post.

In my research I found this facts:

1.-Water over-consumption in industrialized countries:

While the developing world faces a water crisis, those in industrialized countries consume far more than their fair share.

•Food Footprint: It takes 24 liters of water to produce one hamburger. That means it would take over 19.9 billion liters of water to make just one hamburger for every person in Europe. •Technology Footprint: The shiny new iPhone in your pocket requires half a liter of water to charge. That may not seem like much, but with over 80 million active iPhones in the world, that’s 40 million liters to charge those alone.
•Fashion Footprint: That cotton t-shirt you’re wearing right now took 1,514 liters of water to produce, and your jeans required an extra 6,813 liters.
•Bottled Water Footprint: The US, Mexico and China lead the world in bottled water consumption, with people in the US drinking an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled.


2.-What is the Water Footprint:
People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business.

3.-How Many Gallons of Water Does it Take to Make . . .

Car
it takes an estimated 39,090 gallons of water to make a car. It's unclear if that includes the more 2,000 gallons used to make its tires--each tire takes 518 gallons to make. [1]
Pair of Jeans
It takes around 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to produce just one pair of regular ol' blue jeans. [2]
Cotton T-Shirt
Not as bad as jeans, it still takes a whopping 400 gallons of water to grow the cotton required for an ordinary cotton shirt.
Single Board of Lumber
5.4 gallons of water are used to grow enough wood for one lumber board. [3]
Barrel of Beer
In order to process a single barrel of beer (32 gallons of booze), 1,500 gallons of water are sucked down. [3]
To-Go Latte
It takes 53 gallons to make every latte
Gallon of Paint
Takes 13 gallons of water to make.
Individual Bottled Water
This irony shouldn't be lost on anyone: it takes 1.85 gallons of water to manufacture the plastic for the bottle in the average commercial bottle of water.
One Ton of . . .
Steel: 62,000 gallons of water
Cement: 1,360 gallons
One Pound of . . .
Wool: 101 gallons of water
Cotton: 101 gallons
Plastic: 24 gallons
Synthetic Rubber: 55 gallons
And that's just some of the stuff we make--check out how much water it takes to grow all of our food. We all need to make a conscious effort to watch what we buy for its water footprint. And it's not just the US, though--many countries around the world have alarmingly high water footprints, too. So keep your eyes open when you're shopping around--we're wasting way too much water. so the next time your washing your teeth, doing the dishes or taking a shower always remember to not let the water running, cause every drop counts, and there are countries were people have to walk miles and miles to get a gallon of water, so it is important for everybody to take action into solving this problem.

If you need more information about Blog Action Day or to find out how to participate or help go to http://www.blogactionday.change.org/