Sustainablog

I try not to eco-judge people. But recently, I’ve been silently judging people at the grocery store with cases of water at the bottom of their cart. And there are a few friends of mine who I’ve thought about lecturing, but I don’t because I know there is no better way to turn someone off than to lecture.

Still, if one of my friends asked me about my views on bottled water, I’d be happy to tell them they should stop buying them. Here’s why.

1. Bottled water costs a ridiculous amount of money. According to Food & Water Watch,  the national average cost for a gallon of tap water in the U.S. is .002 cents. The national average cost for a gallon of bottled water is anywhere from .89 cents to $8.26 per gallon.
   Even at it’s least expensive, bottled water is 224% more expensive than tap. I can’t think of a single other item the average American would pay 224% more for when it was unnecessary, can you? Read the rest of this entry »

From the back cover of “Dry Spring”:

As it warms, our world is running out of fresh water - fast. Lakes, aquifers and rivers are disappearing, but we consume more water than ever. What will this mean for North America?

Veteran author and Canadian journalist Chris Wood has had a varied career contributing to national and regional publication including the CBC, Global and Mail, The Tyee, The Walrus, and many others. Chris is also co-author of the bookBlockbusters and Trade Wars: Popular Culture in a Globalized World.

In an interview with Wood last month, I asked how he came to write his latest book Dry Spring. He told me that throughout his writing career his focus has been, as he put it, “People and societies in their place”. This interest, combined with his acute awareness of the pressing environmental issues facing society, led him his work on the world’s fresh water supply, most particularly that of North America.

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Most of us know something about carbon footprints. In fact, some of us may have already taken measures to reduce the hypothetical size of our footprints–from walking or riding a bicycle instead of driving, to purchasing carbon credits to reduce the impact of our carbon emissions. But many of us may have never thought about our water footprint. The new website H20 Conserve allows users to calculate their water footprint and gain insights on how most people waste water and how to conserve this precious natural resource.

Despite my interest in water issues, I have never calculated my water footprint, so I decided to check out the website. According to the site, my individual water use is 1,073.25 gallons per day (yikes!). In comparison, the average American uses 1,190.5 gallons of water per day. I also learned that it takes 24 gallons of water to make a single pound of plastic, over a hundred gallons to make a pound of cotton, and that a single dripping faucet can add up to 20 gallons of water lost each day.

In addition to the interactive H20 calculator, the website also offers a list of practical water saving tips, an information guide on relevant water topics, and a glossary of important water-related terms. The site also provides links to educational resources for elementary and high school classrooms. These tools can certainly empower individuals to make water conservation part of their everyday lives.

“By allowing visitors to calculate their water footprint, including the water they use at home, the water used to produce their food, energy and household products, we hope to get people thinking about water in a whole new way,” commented Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, in a press release.

H20 Conserve is the product of collaboration among several public interest organizations committed to water conservation, including Food & Water Watch, GRACE, and The John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

Photo: H20 Conserve

Quicker-melting snow cover will allow forests to encroach on meadows and, ironically, eventually aid in cooling the planet.

Regina Rochefort, a National Park Service science adviser at Mount Rainier, said the meadows surrounding the famous peak have been shrinking because of less snowfall and shorter periods of snow cover. In the past, the snow has restricted new tree growth with freezing temperatures a limited water supply.

So you’re probably thinking this is great news—after all, more trees will store more carbon, right? But according to a study performed last year, the good news is more so that less snow will mean more water for the trees, which will dramatically increase the forest’s overall cooling impact.

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My daughter and I are guests in a state-of-the-art green home, and I have just finished plunging a clogged toilet on her behalf.  I feel queasy. Though I only have to do this a couple of times a year, I feel mildly traumatized.  Sure, it’s nasty, but the part that bothers me most is the toilet itself.

The way I see it, flush toilets are a relic of the past. They consume precious drinking water and produce a disproportionate volume of toxic, bio-hazardous waste. Even low-flush toilets are hybrid Hummers, a field improvement on a fundamentally bad idea.

Aesthetically speaking, does anyone dispute that flush toilets are just plain gross? Hey, other than clogging, splash-back, overflows, streaking, and sound amplification, what’s not to like?

As it turns out, the problems posed by “modern sanitation” are immense, but completely unnecessary.
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To prevent toxic runoff from flowing down storm drains and into the rivers or ocean, Washington hopes to ban washing cars in driveways throughout the state.

While residents complain that washing cars is a family pastime that they should not be required to give up, officials say that the at-home car wash is too harmful to the environment to ignore. “I understand this is something people have done for a long time,” said Bill Moore, a water specialist with the Washington State Department of Ecology, which enacted the ban. “It’s not something we should be doing any longer.”

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