The water that is on earth is a finite resource, and it is the same amount that is here has always been here. Rain may bring water, but it is not water get delivered to earth from out of now where!, it is water that has been sucked in to the atmosphere and is the deposited back to the ground.
So if the amount of water is the same as in the beginning what is all the fuss about us running out of water about then? The answer to that is simple; the amount of water is the same but the amount of humans and animals is thousands of times more.
Apart from the fact that the global population is growing, water now has more uses than ever, and using far more water than ever before. Adding climate change to this and it becomes more understandable why some regions are experiencing weather anomalies and water shortages.
When we talk about how much water we consume, it is not merely the amount of water that we drink that needs to be taken in to account, but also what is used directly and indirectly – this is known as a water footprint.
A direct water footprint is the amount of water we use directly for drinking, personal hygiene, food preparation, gardening, and recreational purposes. An indirect water footprint consists of any water used in the manufacture of products and services we consume, which includes our clothing, the books we read, the music we listen to, our technology, furniture, and motor vehicles, and the water used for the growing, harvesting, packaging and transportation of food –basically everything that is either grown or been manufactured has a water footprint!
Nearly 95% of our indirect water footprint comes from the food we eat – Did You Know, less water is used for growing vegetables than is used to produce beef for consumption! ? so cutting down on red meat would save billions of litres of water per year! The production of denim jeans and cotton t-shirts uses an exorbitant amount of water to produce, as does technology, and in this “disposable” society of that we live in today these are some of the main reasons for high water consumption!!! …. So there is more to it than what we drink!!!
