“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall; it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.” – Margaret Atwood
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It’s in food production that water is most critical.
“The link between water and food is strong,” says Lester R. Brown, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Earth Policy Institute. “We drink, in one form or another, nearly 4 liters of water per day. But the food we consume each day requires at least 2,000 liters to produce, 500 times as much.”
For instance, a farmer requires approximately one thousand gallons of water to cultivate a ton of rice, according to the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
About 89 percent of Filipinos consume rice on a daily basis, some studies show.
It takes so much water to grow crops. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ report titled Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not indicates that a farmer must use 237 liters of water to yield 1 kilogram of cabbage, while around 214 liters of water is necessary to produce 1 kilogram of tomatoes.
“We’re surrounded by a hidden world of water,” pointed out Stephen Leahy, author of the book, Your Water Footprint.
“Liters and liters of it are consumed by everything we eat, and everything we use and buy. Cars, furniture, books, dishes, TVs, highways, buildings, jewellery, toys and even electricity would not exist without water. It’s no exaggeration to say that water is far more valuable and useful than oil.”
A water footprint, as Leahy defined it, is the amount of water “consumed” to make, grow or produce something.
“I use the word consumed to make it clear this is water that can no longer be used for anything else,” he said.
Leahy explained it further in these words: “The water footprint of 500 ml of bottled water is 5.5 liters: 0.5 for the water in the bottle and another five contaminated in the process of making the plastic bottle from oil. The five liters consumed in making the bottle are as real water as the 500 ml you might drink but hardly anyone in business or government accounts for it.”
One 500-ml bottle of soft drink requires 175 liters of water to produce. Soft drink is almost entirely water so a half-liter bottle effectively contains a half-liter of water.
“That’s the direct water input,” pointed out Leahy, an independent journalist for over 20 years who has reported on environmental issues from dozens of countries. “But soft drinks are not just water in a bottle. When you include the production of all the flavoring ingredients, the manufacturing and supply chain, each bottle requires about 175 liters.”
To produce one smartphone requires 910 liters of water.
“Cellphones and smartphones use water throughout their production process, from creating the microchips to mining the metals used in the batteries to polishing the silica glass used in their touch screens,” Leahy wrote. “In total, each phone requires 910 liters of water to manufacture.”
It has been predicted that the number of activated cell phones is soon expected to exceed the world’s population. “To manufacture these phones will require 6.7 trillion liters of water, much of it blue and grey,” Leahy said.
“One of the biggest surprises (while writing the book) was learning how small direct use of water for drinking, cooking and showering is by comparison,” he said.
Surprisingly, flushing toilets is the biggest water daily use — not showers!
“Four hundred liters is not a trivial amount; however, the virtual water that’s in the things we eat, wear and use each day averages 7,500 liters in North America, resulting in a daily water footprint of almost 8,000 liters,” Leahy said. “That’s more than twice the size of the global average.”
Water is being depleted all over the world. “Today, we withdraw water far faster than it can be recharged – unsustainably mining what was once a renewable resource,” deplores Janet Abramovitz, a researcher at the Washington-D.C. Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute.
“Water, not oil, is the most precious fluid in our lives, the substance from which all life on the earth has sprung and continues to depend,” wrote Maryann Bird in a Time feature.
Water is even more expensive than gold. “Water is worth more than gold and necessary for survival above all other resources on earth,” pointed out a feature published in South Review.
Although the reduction of oil and other fossil fuels may present difficulties, there are alternative energy sources that can be utilized. Society has the capacity to adjust to the unavailability of these resources. Nevertheless, a shortage of water would result in catastrophic consequences for the planet.
