Sea levels are rising due to melting glaciers, but climate change is also bringing extreme weather - so drinking water supplies are declining from year to year. This is further compounded by high consumption, especially in intensive agriculture and industry. Will we soon be faced with the fact that water will no longer flow from our taps because of this?
In households, we strive to reduce drinking water consumption. We teach children to turn off the tap while brushing their teeth, shorten the shower time, install boilers for rinsing toilets with less consumption, and catch rainwater in cisterns. But all this is just a drop in the ocean and does not affect drinking water consumption as much as we would like. The reasons why problems are becoming more common are hidden elsewhere.
Who consumes the most water? Let’s take a look at some statistics that are sure to surprise you. The production of one bottle of water uses three times as much water as the volume of the bottle - for a half-liter bottle, a liter and a half of water is used in production, as the processing and shaping of plastic is a rather "greedy" business. Beverages are not only about environmentally friendly packaging production, but also about consumption in the beverage process itself. On average, two liters of water are used for a liter of non-alcoholic beverage, 4 liters for a liter of beer and an incredible 35 liters for a liter of spirits.
As with industrial food production itself, immense thirst is also characteristic of production in agriculture and other industries. If you make a cup of coffee in the morning, you are not just drinking a pot of liquid, but you are curbing the consumption of as much as 130 liters of water. Did you know that growing coffee is such a thirsty business? And coffee is not at the very top of agricultural spending at all. One of the biggest culprits for the shortage is growing cotton, without which life is really hard to imagine. As much as 10,000 liters of water are used for one pair of jeans, and 2,500 liters for one T-shirt.
The reason I mention cotton is that it is a type of intensive agriculture that also significantly transforms the landscape. In order to have enough water to irrigate cotton fields, in many countries (mostly rather undeveloped countries) the water flows towards the fields, the old riverbeds dry up, and as a result the fauna along the former river dies. more watering gardens to grow homemade food for their own family, we are not talking at all.
Glaciers are disappearing, Lake Baikal is disappearing It is well known that glaciers are disappearing due to climate change. There are also problems with other water supplies. Russia's Lake Baikal, located in southern Siberia, is the largest freshwater lake in the world and has so far been known to hold as much as one-fifth of all unfrozen freshwater on Earth. However, the lake is also shrinking and shrinking in size. Climate change is contributing somewhat, and much of the disappearance has been caused by humans - the level is expected to fall mainly due to hydropower and the use of water power for energy purposes.
What about pollution? The amount of water itself is important, but it must also be borne in mind that it must be perfect - both for the needs of consumption and for the life of aquatic organisms. People try to prevent pollution, but often in vain, or we find ourselves in a vicious circle in our efforts. Let's think: because the seas are polluted with microplastics, which are also eliminated from our synthetic clothes every time we wash our clothes, we can decide not to wear "plastic" clothes anymore; we opt for cotton, which requires a lot of pesticides to grow, which also pollute the water; lastly, we land on organic cotton, where there are no pesticides, but inappropriately more water is used than for growing ordinary cotton. Finally, many people say that a bad impact on the environment cannot be avoided at all. But it is not true: there is a partial solution, and it is called consumer resistance. We can buy less clothing to produce both less cotton and less artificial fabrics.
Fish is such a healthy food, right? If we start with drinks, we end with food. Are you an opponent of cruel intensive livestock farming and therefore you only eat fish from meat? These are often advertised as very healthy foods, which is certainly true as long as they are not contaminated with heavy metals and microplastics. Surely you have also heard predictions that fishing could completely empty our oceans by 2050, so many people are opting only for farmed fish. But even large fish farms contribute their pebbles to water destruction. We don't have to go far for evidence.
Will water always remain a public good? With the reduction of drinking water supplies, we can also expect an increase in prices, which is already arousing the interest of various companies that see the provision of drinking water as an excellent business of the future. In some countries, water is already partly in private hands, e.g. in Australia, private companies own more than ten per cent of the water supply (mostly Chinese). The largest private companies that own water are in France - Veolia and Suez control as much as 60 percent of the French market.
Attempts to privatize water are recurring all over the world, but fortunately many countries have so far successfully resisted the pressure of capital. The belief that water is a public good and access to drinking water is a basic human right is the belief of many of us. We can only hope that this opinion will always be heard.
Photos are taken from google.com.
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@Purebeauty
Sounds good