Laura Nayibi Arias, Culture Editor
How will you treat Mother Nature this week?
This week you can show the earth how much you appreciate her by using less water. Many of us do not think about how much water we use daily because we think drinking water, showering, brushing our teeth, cooking and washing our hands are the only times water is involved in our daily routines. This is simply a dirty lie. How is our clothing manufactured? How are our vegetables grown? How are our cows raised? How are our hair products created? Without water such things would not exist in our lives.
If at this point you do not believe our lives revolve around water, below is an image of my results after calculating my “water footprint” through waterfootprint.org. One’s water footprint is the amount of water used by an individual in a year. This can be calculated through the website mentioned above.
My results suggest that I consume 109,103 gallons of water a year which is equivalent to 298.91 gallons a day. Though this may seem like a lot of water, most Americans use double this amount. Since I follow a strict vegetarian diet and strive to be as sustainable as possible, this number impressed me but it also made me ponder over how much water is consumed by the average American.
So reduce or don’t use!
Take the quiz yourself at waterfootprint.org.
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