Virtual Water

Day 3

The IQ Challenge continues on! I'm feeling much more positive about it today, likely because I've accumulated a decent amount of water from all my walking, so some of my anxieties are gone about how I'm going to get my next glass of water.

I wanted to share a concept I mentioned earlier in my rules about not counting invisible, also known as virtual water. This made me think a little bit deeper about inequalities of access to water, especially for some of the most marginalized in societies-children living on the street.

Professor Tony Allan, coined the term "virtual water" to describe the amount of water embedded within a product that is not visible to you. It is in the products we buy and what is more visible to us-the foods we eat. It an mathematical conceptualization to give an idea about how much water is used to maintain our lives that most of us would unlikely attribute to our water use. Glad this doesn't show up on my water bill and here's why...

The water used for the production of items we use everyday such as cotton, paper and clothing amounts to about 167L daily. The food we eat plays an even bigger role. A beef steak, for example, is made up of 15,400L of water for every 1 kilo. This is worked out by the cow needing to eat ~1,300 kilograms of grains for about 3 years before its slaughtered to produce 200 kilos of beef. You can even go further to look at the water it would take for all the grains needed to sustain a cattle farm, the amount of water used to clean the farm and slaughterhouse, the cattles water consumption – all of which adds up to an estimated 3,000,000L of water! Some other examples include 1 kilo of chocolate requiring about 24,000L of water, and one single piece of paper needs 10L!

I found this great infographic that summarizes this concept. This image represents what an average Brazilian consumes or uses in virtual water, or how they cleverly put it a water footprint. Recall, Brazil is classified as a middle-income country, so you can likely increase those figures if you are reading from a high-income country.

Food, or shall I say water, for thought!

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**Register your interest at: http://inequalityquestion.com/challenge/ to undertake a challenge in your community, or donate to participants around the world fundraising this month for S.A.L.V.E. International:http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/InequalityQuestion