World Water Day

Today is the 22nd of March: World Water Day. This day was established by the United Nations in 1993 to highlight the importance of this precious resourse and the need to preserve it and make it accessible to everybody in the Worl.

How many times when we were kids they keep repeating us: “turn of the tap, do not waste water“. This simple sentence hides a huge wisdom: water is an invaluable resource for man and the planet we live in. Anyway, this good habit, that we were following as kids without asking questions, it is not a cornerstone for modern society.

As always in our blog, we start providing some evidence to understand the proportion of the problem. At global level, 70% of freshwater is used for agriculture, 22% for the industry, and just 8% for domestic usage. If this numbers can seem exagerated think a that at national level in Italy water used for agriculture reaches the 89% of the total.

Somebody could think at this point that turning off the tap of our kitchnen or bathroom, at the end of the day, will not change a thing. Naturally it is not like that because in this battle against waste of the so called blue gold everybody needs to give a contribution and the good habit of turning off the tap when washing teeth can be important. But small good habits may be not enough. Let’s go back to the numbers…

Water for agriculture is used in part for the cultivation of fruit, vegetables and cereals which are aimed to our consumption and in part for the cultivation of food for farm animals. This means that a diet rich in animal products entails a daily consumption of 4.000-5.000 liters of water per capita against the 1.500-2.500 of a vegetarian diet (or even 1.000 of a vegan diet). Not a small difference, uh? The reduction in the consumption of meat, therefore, is not only important for ethical reason, for the proved beneficial effects on human body and the reduction of CO2 emissions due to animals flatulences (we spoke about these topics in two previous articles of the blog), but it is fundamental also to reduce the consumption of food and water. This kind of data can help us understand how food waste (topic which we have already spoken about in our blog) means not only wasting food but also water. Let’s make a quick calculation: when you throw in the bin a steak that remained in the fridge too much time think that to produce a kg of meat it is estimated that you need between 5.000 and 20.000 liters of water. It means throwing away the water contained in 33 baths (in the hypotesis that “only” 5.000 liters of water are enough). To our children we should teach that it is not only important to turn off the tap of water, but also that it is a good thing not to waste food, because the production of any food is obtained thanks to huge quantity of water resources.

But if this little things can in the long run and in large scale be decisive to protect the Earth it is also true that we urgently need techniques and policies to preserve water. Today about 80% of sewage water that runs out of our houses and factories is not re-used in any manner. But this kind of water, treated with the right techniques, can contribute to the irrigation of fields and other things.

Is it technically impossible? No, not at all: here an example, maybe the most famous, on the topic. The companies of Kalundborg, a city near Copenhagen, have created a system of industrial symbiosis in which water used in a single company can be used as a resource for another one. In this way, on the one hand companies can save money, and on the other hand the city can save more than 4 million cubic metres of water per year. In Kalundborg they managed to turn off the tap of water… It would be great if we could do the same in Italy, with national and European policies that could favor companies which adopt virtuous systems.

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Data included in the present article are taken from Food Sustainability Index of Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition.