I am Officially a Waterhog!

Hello Blog World!

After two weeks of careful tracking, I finally have my numbers for my daily water use. I:

• Flush the toilet 5 times a day and have a 13 litre toilet
• Wash my hands and/or face 7 times a day and run the water 15 seconds each time
• Shower 3 times a week for 9 minutes
• Wash the dishes once a day and run the water for 2 minutes each time
• Use 3 litres of water a week for cooking
• Brush my teeth twice a day and run the tap 30 seconds each time
• Run the water about 3 minutes a week for shaving
• Clean 2 loads of laundry per week with a standard washing machine

With all these numbers, I use about 275 liters of water a day. In the city of Guelph the water usage is approximately 230 litres a day (Source: City of Guelph). Canadians on average consume 329 litres of water a day (Source: Environment Canada)

So, although my water usage isn't nearly as high as the Canadian average, it is much higher than the Guelph average. To put my water use in a better perspective, in the UK the average water consumption is 149 litres per day, in China 86 litres per day and in Mozambique only 4 litres a day (Source: Data 360)

I will admit I am quite ashamed of my water consumption. It's hard to see how much water one really uses in a day. But what to do? Well, thankfully there are many ways that you can conserve water. As of today I am officially in water warrior mode, I will post again with updates soon!

Ta-ta for now!

Your Water Warrior,

Erin

What to Drink in the Morning?

Hello Water Lovers!

In one of my classes a few weeks ago the professor was showing us how much water goes into the foods that we eat. The was a section showing thinking about how much water goes into coffee and tea. And I figured, why not see what's less water intensive to drink in the morning, tea or coffee?

Well, I grabbed the stats from our friends at The Water Footprint Network and found (like always) some interesting numbers. For 1 cup (250 mL) of coffee it takes approximately 140 litres of water. Adding in 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of milk means another 30 litres of water. So in total that's 170 litres for a coffee. For the same amount of tea (250 mL), it takes roughly 30 litres of water. Again, adding 30 mL of milk brings the total up to 60 litres. So, in terms of water usage, I should stick to tea.

As a fun little project, I also went through and determined the approximate water usage for different Tim Horton's orders (Note: I couldn't find information for the water used to make cream, we'll just have to get by with milk in our figurative coffee. I also assumed that one serving of sugar is 2 grams, based on a quick look at different brands of sugar packets)

This morning I drank 2 cups of coffee with 2 tablespoons of milk each, the water needed to produce that was roughly 340 liters. Pretty incredible.

And because I am a huge fan of trivia, here are some fun facts:

• It requires 120 billion cubic meters of water to produce the coffee consumed by Earth's population in one year
• For Earth's population's annual consumption of tea, 30 billion cubic meters of water are required
• Sugar accounts for roughly 3.4% of the global water use for crop production

That's all for now, I will be starting my water tracking tomorrow and I am very excited! I would also like to plug my new page about Water Conservation Resources! Check it out!

Cheers from the Water Warrior,

Erin