{"id":64965,"date":"2019-05-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2019\/05\/07\/livegreen-virtual-water-use\/"},"modified":"2022-09-02T17:32:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T22:32:10","slug":"livegreen-virtual-water-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2019\/05\/07\/livegreen-virtual-water-use\/","title":{"rendered":"LiveGreen: Virtual water use"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, we talked about direct water use<\/a> (water used to shower, make coffee, water the lawn\/plant, etc.) that shows up on your bill. Have you ever thought about the water that is used for you? <\/p>\n

This “virtual” or indirect water is the amount of water that goes into the other aspects of your life: water used for food, material items, fuel and even electricity. This use doesn’t show up on the monthly bill so most don’t give it a second thought. But there’s a surprising amount of water that goes into everyday tasks, which dramatically impacts our water footprint.<\/p>\n

Many of us think about fossil fuels for energy use, but not water. Power plants use water to create steam, which generates energy. We use a lot of energy, which means 41% of all water use went to power generation at a total of 133 billion gallons a day. Fuel for transportation isn’t much better–the U.S. uses up to 2 billion gallons of water a day to refine gasoline products; totaling 3-6 gallons of water used for every 1 gallon of gas (amount depends on fuel type). <\/p>\n

Food production uses a lot of water, especially as related to meat. On average, a vegetarian\/vegan diet uses half the virtual water as a meat eater. Why? Crops need to be irrigated, the crops grown are fed to animals, animals drink water, and the entire process (crop to your plate) uses a lot of transportation. A cup of coffee actually requires 34 gallons of water to ‘make,’ while a serving of beef takes over 650 gallons to get to the table! Generally speaking, eating more plants\/less meat reduces water use. Locally grown items use less transportation which also reduces water, making your neighbor’s chicken egg more water efficient than your Columbian coffee.<\/p>\n

All of those ‘things’ we buy use water too-growing cotton is water-intensive as is manufacturing, making a common T-shirt\/jeans outfit worth ~3,000 gallons of water. Automobiles contains many different materials, so it requires even more-14,000-22,000 gallons each.<\/p>\n

We all need to eat and be clothed, so water will always need to be used, but virtual water use demonstrates how important it is to recycle<\/a>, use active transportation<\/a> and eat a healthy diet.<\/p>\n

Wondering what your water footprint is? Check out this fun
\ncalculator<\/a> and associated resources, to see where you can have the most impact.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How much water do we actually use?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":64966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","department-unmc-today-todays-headlines","author_override-melanie-stewart-livegreen"],"yoast_head":"\nLiveGreen: Virtual water use<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How much water do we actually use?\" \/>\n<meta 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