Could you drink, bathe and clean using just 20 litres a day?

[Sum Doood]

From The Independent today:


"1,760 litres to get one pint of milk out of a cow and into your fridge; a kilogram of cheddar swallows up 5,000 litres."

Stats for "ammunition" and an interesting article too.

[Tigerlily]

This is very interesting! I would like to try this experiment actually.

[Fuhzy]

That works out to about 3700 gallons of water for every gallon of milk.

Insanity...

[twinkle]

My heating has been broken for the last week and I've been bathing fairly satisfactorily in between 2-4 litres of water (using 1-2 plastic drinks bottles).

And I don't clean very often

[ellaminnowpea]

I think it'd be awesome to reduce my usage... but I'd have to shower like 2x week and never flush the toilet. I drink like 4 of those liters each day for hydration alone!!

[Sum Doood]

....I drink like 4 of those liters each day for hydration alone!!

Seriously? (In a Pennsylvanian climate), you drink seven pints of water per day? Plus the water you consume from other drinks and foods? That's more than four times as much water as most health advisers would recommend.

(Btw, we're not spelling it wrongly - it is litres, not liters, even in the USA).

[Risker]

From The Independent today:


"1,760 litres to get one pint of milk out of a cow and into your fridge; a kilogram of cheddar swallows up 5,000 litres."

Stats for "ammunition" and an interesting article too.

It takes between 2,000 and 5,000 litres of water to grow just 1kg of rice, 1,000 litres for 1kg of wheat, and 500 litres for 1kg of potatoes.

I really don't think it's a good idea to just pick statistics out of an article that suit your argument when there are others in the same article that don't support it.

I'm not sure how much I agree with the article anyway, since water isn't actually used up in the same way as fossil fuels are, once water is used it is returned to the earth in pretty much the same state as it was originally. Of course there are purification and transportation costs etc as well as issues of redirecting water from areas that desperately need it, however, if potatoes happen to be grown in an area with an over-abundance of fresh water then it really isn't an issue.

I'd be interested to find out where they got the figures for this article and how they were worked out.

As for wether I could last on just 20 litres a day I'd have to say that I think I could as on numerous occassions while camping I've made do with probably less than 5 litres a day and managed to do everything I needed with it. At home of course I use more but am still very cautious not to waste any, my main usage of water is probably in the products that I buy.

[Hemlock]

I think we could do it, we'd keep the 20 litres for drinking and cooking and bath in the sea or river and use one of the big water butts for flushing the toilet and washing up - probably wouldn't be very comfortable though, I have first hand experience of this when I lived in Mauritius in the 70's.
The house we lived in didn't have any plumbing so all washing of clothes had to be done in the river and water had to be hauled in every day to flush the toilets and do the washing up in.

[Fuhzy]

(Btw, we're not spelling it wrongly - it is litres, not liters, even in the USA).

Actually in the USA it's usually liter.

"In British usage, some words of French, Latin, or Greek origin end with a consonant followed by -re, with the -re unstressed and pronounced /ə(ɹ)/. Most of these words have the ending -er in the US. The difference is most common for words ending -bre or -tre: British spellings theatre, goitre, litre, lustre, mitre, nitre, reconnoitre, saltpetre, spectre, centre, titre; calibre, fibre, sabre, and sombre all have -er in American spelling. The ending -cre, as in acre, lucre, massacre, mediocre, is preserved in American English, to indicate the c is pronounced /k/ rather than /s/. After other consonants, there are not many -re endings even in British English: louvre, manoeuvre after -v-; meagre, ogre after -g-; euchre, ochre, sepulchre after -ch-. In the US, ogre and euchre are standard; manoeuvre and sepulchre are usually maneuver and sepulcher; and the other -re forms listed are variants of the equivalent -er form."

[Sum Doood]

I really don't think it's a good idea to just pick statistics out of an article that suit your argument when there are others in the same article that don't support it.

Was there any indication that consuming meat and dairy produce was less wasteful of water than not consuming meat and dairy produce?

Actually in the USA it's usually liter.

Oh, OK, sorry. (I typed it into a Word document where the European spelling was accepted and the American was shown as a mistake).

[Big Good Wolf]

I've got no mains water here and carry my water from a tap across the field in two 20l jerry cans.
40l lasts me a lot longer than two days.
I suppose if you added in showering at the gym, going to the launderette and rain water use, I probably would be over 20l a day though.

[Aradia]

Yes, did so for a long time. the occassional day would go over when I did clothes washing, but other than that it can be done easily. Neccessity is the mother .....

[eve]

What's with all this going short of water when it is there? After the Australian Prime Minister mentioned he'd put some steak on the bbq if the PM of Japan came to visit him in Australia, I wrote and asked our PM if he was aware that a half-kilo of prime rib comes at the cost of a thousand gallons of fresh water.

The point is, we vegans don't eat meat, and therefore save hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, so why refrain from at least daily showers and plenty of water to drink?

[Aradia]

I see where your thinking comes from Eve, but just becasue we don't eat meat doesn't mean we don't have responsibilities regarding water consumption etc. I don't eat meat and grow my own veg so I could think , sod it I'm not gardening organically because I'm already contributing less to pesticide mis-use becasue I'm not eating meat or commercially grown veg.... but I don't think my local wildlife would thank me for that. And I don't contribute towards the massive waste of water that is the meat-raising industry, but I don't choose to leave my sprinklers on all night because I see local water table as a separate issue.

Though some of the posts above were talking about using less water because it simply wasn't easily available.... ie, a trek across a field to get it, etc. I have a well and spring water on my land, but I still don't use it willy nilly as there is only so much water and I don't know who else is accessing the same water course. I hope they are showing me the same consideration I'm showing them!

I do totally see your point though. (Did you get a response to your letter??!!!)

[BlackCats]

The point is, we vegans don't eat meat, and therefore save hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, so why refrain from at least daily showers and plenty of water to drink?

I agree really. I try not to overly waste water but I don't restrict myself too much. I do have an empty water bottle in my toilet tank which is supposed to decrease the water wastage with each flush and I don't even have a water tap in my back garden to use. I am trying to break the habit of buying bottled water from shops when I'm out and about as I think that is very wasteful. It really is terrible how much water is used through meat and dairy production.

[cobweb]

i know i could live on less than 20 litres a day because i used to when i lived in a caravan. I just washed with a sink and flannel and a jug for my hair and did 1 sinkful of washing-up each day, and washed my clothes once a week.

i don't waste water but i'm damned if i'm going to beat myself up these days for having a shower and washing my clothes often - there other people who need to change their ways radically before we can all make a difference so i'm pretty much with you, aswell, Eve.

[eve]

Aradia, I get your point, and no, Mr Rudd hasn't replied yet to my letter. I agree with cobweb, why should we beat ourselves up? though of course for the sake of prudence we don't waste because it is costly.

[puffin]

I agree to. I dont leave the tap running for no reason and make sure my washing machine is full before i use it, bath the kids around the same time so they use the same water and have a water butt for the plants, but i like a nice deep bath so i can relax in at the end of the day, i dont feel guilty about that. Im not going to have a bath with 3 inches of water in and freeze my butt off because i used the washing machine earlier.

[Agatha]

i've been trying to reduce my water for the last couple of weeks. My boiler broke over the winter and for several weeks (due to a rubbish landlord) we were boiling the kettle and strip washing every day instead of having cold shows. Only used 3-4 litres of water even with washing my hair. It really made me appreciate what we use the rest of the time.

I'm back to having showers now but i try to be super speedy, not flush the loo after a wee (unless i have guests), and only wash my clothes when they actually need it. Unfortunately the washing machine doesn't do economy cycles so instead i make sure its full and only on 30 degrees. I'm not sure what else i can do without skimping on hygiene. It rains every single day here I don't see the need to water the garden.

Also when i was a student and couldn't afford to put the central heating on, i would instead fill a deep bath with hot water and read in the bath until it went cold several hours later. I felt a bit guilty about using the water but it saved a whoel lot of gas!

[Sum Doood]

.....i would instead fill a deep bath with hot water and read in the bath until it went cold several hours later. I felt a bit guilty about using the water but it saved a whoel lot of gas!

But how was the bathwater heated?

[treehugga]

I've always used miniscule amounts of water as I live in a drought ridden part of australia on tank water which relies on rainfall. It's not hard to do. we use water saving devises in toilet, shower etc. Rarely have baths and recycle washing water from washing machine to do at least 5 washes - clothes are still brilliantly clean. we use any greywater on the garden. You can have a full body shower in just a couple of litres.

[Cattmogg]

Easily.