bemoreeco

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News

The amount of water used to produce food and goods imported by developed countries is worsening water shortages in the developing world, a report says.

The report, focusing on the UK, says two-thirds of the water used to make UK imports is used outside its borders.

The Engineering the Future alliance of professional engineering bodies says this is unsustainable, given population growth and climate change.

It says countries such as the UK must help poorer nations curb water use.

“We must take account of how our water footprint is impacting on the rest of the world,” said Professor Roger Falconer, director of the Hydro-Environmental Research Centre at Cardiff University and a member of the report’s steering committee.

If the water crisis becomes critical, it will pose a serious threat to the UK’s future development
Professor Peter Guthrie

“If we are to prevent the ‘perfect storm’, urgent action is necessary.”

The term perfect storm was used last year by the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, to describe future shortages of energy, food and water.

Forecasts suggest that when the world’s population soars beyond 8bn in 20 years time, the global demand for food and energy will jump by 50%, with the need for fresh water rising by 30%.

But developing countries are already using significant proportions of their water to grow food and produce goods for consumption in the West, the report says.

“The burgeoning demand from developed countries is putting severe pressure on areas that are already short of water,” said Professor Peter Guthrie, head of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Cambridge University, who chaired the steering group.

“If the water crisis becomes critical, it will pose a serious threat to the UK’s future development because of the impact it would have on our access to vital resources.”

Key to the report is the concept of “embedded water” – the water used to grow food and make things.

Embedded in a pint of beer, for example, is about 130 pints (74 litres) of water – the total amount needed to grow the ingredients and run all the processes that make the pint of beer.

A cup of coffee embeds about 140 litres (246 pints) of water, a cotton T-shirt about 2,000 litres, and a kilogram of steak 15,000 litres.

Using this methodology, UK consumers see only about 3% of the water usage they are responsible for.

The average UK consumer uses about 150 litres per day, the size of a large bath.

Ten times as much is embedded in the British-made goods bought by the average UK consumer; but that represents only about one-third of the total water embedded in all the average consumer’s food and goods, with the remainder coming from imports.

The UK is not unique in this – the same pattern is seen in most developed countries.

The engineering institutions say it means nations such as the UK have a duty to help curb water use in the developing world, where about one billion people already do not have sufficient access to clean drinking water.

UK-funded aid projects should have water conservation as a central tenet, the report recommends, while companies should examine their supply chains and reduce the water used in them.

This could lead to difficult questions being asked, such as whether it is right for the UK to import beans and flowers from water-stressed countries such as Kenya.

While growing crops such as these uses water, selling them brings foreign exchange into poor nations.

In the West, the report suggests, concerns over water could eventually lead to goods carrying a label denoting their embedded water content, in the same way as electrical goods now sport information about their energy consumption.

The Engineering the Future alliance includes the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM).

>>> Please read the full article here

Men are hardly any faster than women, and power showers can use more water than baths, so without getting too steamed up, what are your showering habits?Let’s talk dirty. How dirty are you? How long does it take you to scrub yourself clean of a morning?

Research by a new “Shower Power” campaign launched yesterday – in a bid to save water by encouraging short showers – shows that contrary to lazy, popular and potentially misogynist belief, women only spend a mere 39 seconds longer in the shower than men. Despite the fact that many men like myself are clearly follicularly challenged and don’t need to wash our hair, we’re not much faster.

This is a bigger environmental issue than you might think – the way we choose to exfoliate and freshen up has potentially dramatic impacts on our daily water consumption. In the UK each of us currently use around 150 litres a day (let’s not even start on the embedded water, which adds over 3,000 further litres to our indirect daily quaffing) and the government wants individuals’ daily water consumption to be cut to 130 litres by 2030. The trouble is water consumption is actually increasing by about 1% a year.

So back to that survey to find the culprits. The vast majority of women (71%) apparently take showers of 10 minutes or less and a quarter of women (26%) manage to take showers of five minutes or less. This is only slightly below the number of men who do so (75% and 30% respectively). There are also intriguing differences on age, with time spent in the shower decreasing with increasing age. The 55s and over (mean shower time: 8 mins, 41 seconds) are five minutes faster than people aged 18 to 24 (mean shower time: 13 mins 26 seconds) with well over a third (39%) of people aged 55 or over even managing to shower in five minutes or less. Does this suggest a slap-dash approach to personal hygiene in the more mature, a no-nonsense efficient approach, or a deep seated eco-consciousness and concern about water conservation?

Of course, all this scrubbing and lathering doesn’t just use water – it uses energy too. Personal washing accounts for around 33% of the water used in the home and hot water is the second largest consumer of domestic energy after space heating. And rising bills are enough to make even the most bath-fond switch to showers. There have been some recent trends, such as the rise in shower-gel sales by Unilever, that confirm a money- and water-saving-inspired shift from bathing to showering. Apart from the distinct advantage of not having to scrub the tide-mark of scum from around the bath rim when you have a shower (or is that just me?), generally showers are better than baths as they use much less water. However, this comes with a couple of big fat caveats: what type of shower you have and how long you prance around in it.

A typical bath uses around 80 litres of water whereas the average electric shower sprays out about six litres a minute. So you’d have to be soaping yourself vigorously for over 13 minutes to use the same amount of water as that bath. But if you have a power shower that pumps out up to 15 litres per minute, in which case you have only 5 minutes of swift slathering before, from a water conservation perspective, you might as well have had that bath.

There are ways to make your shower even greener, of course, such as aerating shower heads that mix in extra air to mimic the effect of a power shower without the water consumption of a thirsty elephant. But when it comes to the biggest environmental impact of your morning wash, like so many things in life, timing is everything. The best way to understand how much water your morning sluice consumes is to get your hands on a shower timer and a water meter.

I’d be interested to hear how long you spend in the shower – and how successful you’ve been in cutting your water use, or your shower-hogging partner’s use. Has anyone gone so far as sharing daily showers? Let me know in the comments.

Men are hardly any faster than women, and power showers can use more water than baths, so without getting too steamed up, what are your showering habits?Let’s talk dirty. How dirty are you? How long does it take you to scrub yourself clean of a morning?

Research by a new “Shower Power” campaign launched yesterday – in a bid to save water by encouraging short showers – shows that contrary to lazy, popular and potentially misogynist belief, women only spend a mere 39 seconds longer in the shower than men.

This is a bigger environmental issue than you might think – the way we choose to exfoliate and freshen up has potentially dramatic impacts on our daily water consumption. In the UK each of us currently use around 150 litres a day (let’s not even start on the embedded water, which adds over 3,000 further litres to our indirect daily quaffing) and the government wants individuals’ daily water consumption to be cut to 130 litres by 2030. The trouble is water consumption is actually increasing by about 1% a year.

So back to that survey to find the culprits. The vast majority of women (71%) apparently take showers of 10 minutes or less and a quarter of women (26%) manage to take showers of five minutes or less. This is only slightly below the number of men who do so (75% and 30% respectively). There are also intriguing differences on age, with time spent in the shower decreasing with increasing age. The 55s and over (mean shower time: 8 mins, 41 seconds) are five minutes faster than people aged 18 to 24 (mean shower time: 13 mins 26 seconds) with well over a third (39%) of people aged 55 or over even managing to shower in five minutes or less. Does this suggest a slap-dash approach to personal hygiene in the more mature, a no-nonsense efficient approach, or a deep seated eco-consciousness and concern about water conservation?

Of course, all this scrubbing and lathering doesn’t just use water – it uses energy too. Personal washing accounts for around 33% of the water used in the home and hot water is the second largest consumer of domestic energy after space heating. There have been some recent trends, such as the rise in shower-gel sales by Unilever, that confirm a money- and water-saving-inspired shift from bathing to showering. Generally speaking showers are better than baths as they use much less water. However, this comes with a couple of big fat caveats: what type of shower you have and how long you prance around in it.

A typical bath uses around 80 litres of water whereas the average electric shower sprays out about six litres a minute. So you’d have to be soaping yourself vigorously for over 13 minutes to use the same amount of water as that bath. But if you have a power shower that pumps out up to 15 litres per minute, in which case you have only 5 minutes of swift slathering before, from a water conservation perspective, you might as well have had that bath.

There are ways to make your shower even greener, of course, such as aerating shower heads that mix in extra air to mimic the effect of a power shower without the water consumption of a thirsty elephant. But when it comes to the biggest environmental impact of your morning wash, like so many things in life, timing is everything. The best way to understand how much water your morning sluice consumes is to get your hands on a shower timer and a water meter.

>>>Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Taking a few simple steps to increase water efficiency around the home will not only save more of this precious resource, but it will significantly reduce household energy bills and save all the CO2 emissions associated with them.

Below we have put together 10 top free and simple water saving tips for around the home over the summer months.

1. Don’t leave the tap running while brushing your teeth, shaving or washing your face.
2. Take a short shower rather than a bath.
3. Only use the dishwasher or washing machine when full.  A half full machine wastes water and energy.
4. Fill a saucepan of water for washing vegetables rather than leaving the tap running.
5. Once it has cooled down, use left-over water from cooking to water plants around the home and garden.
6. Check the toilet for leaks by putting a little food colouring in the toilet tank.  If colour appears in the bowl within 30 mins and following no flushes, there is a leak which should be fixed.
7. If you are on a water meter, use it to check for leaks.  Take a meter reading, avoid using water for 2 hours and if after checking the meter again there is a difference, you have a leak.
8. Use a bucket of water and sponge for car washing rather than a hose.
9. Water outdoor plants and gardens in the early morning as this helps reduce evaporation and is also a good defence against slugs and garden pests.
10. Place a layer of mulch around trees and plants which will slow evaporation of moisture and reduce the need to water them.