How much water do you use per day?

[Brian Howell]

Starting last year, Kate and I sought to substantially curtail our water consumption. We started taking shorter showers, capturing water out of the taps and showers spent waiting for it to get hot, using gray water, e.g., from floor mopping, to flush toilets. (We’re rather eco-minded; we recycle glass, plastic, and household items, too. I’m feeling rather eco-smug right now.) As a result of our increasing efforts, we’ve watched our household per capita consumption of water fall by nearly 40%. (More of that eco-smug feeling.) Still, I’m disappointed that we do use as much as we do, around 35 gallons per day per person. I want to do better but, living in an apartment, I’m precluded from doing some of the obvious simple things, such as replacing the two toilets with low-flow units, or (buying and) using a modern, HE washer: we use the ones at the laundromat just down the street, owned by our landlords, which consume about 27 gallons per cycle.

I’m also aware that I use water indirectly. Many of you are probably aware that food production consumes huge amounts of water. But water is also used in the production of many consumer goods. Here are a few examples of both from the EPA:

• 1/3 pound burger requires 660 gallons of water, 
  
• one pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons, 
  
• a pound of cheese requires 700 gallon,
  
• two slices of bread require 22 gallons,
  
• lettuce only takes about 13 gallons per pound to produce,
  
• 500 sheets of paper absorb 1,321 gallons,
  
• blue jeans suck up 2,900 gallons per pair
  

Now CityLab, a unit of The Atlantic magazine, has put up a water use calculator that accounts for virtual (indirect) water use. According to it, Kate and I each consume 1,416 gallons per day and have a household total of 2,870 GPD. (I don’t understand why the household total is more than 100% of our combine uses; I’m guessing that the calculator lumps some consumption into a separate household column.) As staggering as those figures are, our personal consumptions are well under the national average of 2,220 gallons per person per day.

Accounting for indirect/virtual consumption, for all our efforts, Kate and I have been able to reduce our total per capita consumption by just about 0.23%. 

[jack saunders]

With any kind of "clean up" like water conservation, the cost per unit of progress soars after a while, but the early gains are easy and huge.  We cut to "flush only on brown" and sent lots of landscaping to fallow at the first drought alert more than a year ago.  Those measures alone cut usage in HALF....from 300 a day to 150.  If everybody took the basic steps, the aggregate cut in demand would be sufficient.

 

---

From: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>
To: Ipse-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2015 8:26 AM
Subject: [Ipse Dixit] How much water do you use per day?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ipse Dixit" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Ipse-dixit+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Ipse-dixit/800a2371-96e7-46d0-a039-96e2c4acef5f%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Matt Fish]

What about the ag elephant in the room? I've read conflicting accounts about that 80%-goes-to-agriculture number.

Our GPD is around 82. That's our city water meter reading divided by four people (should children count?). Our property area is 7,500 square feet. We have a small 750 square foot lawn. The rest is on a drip system. We are well within the tier 1 usage rate. Of course the lawn has to go. But my lawn is *special* right? <sarcasm>

We have an HE washing machine and moderately low-flow toilets (1.28 GPF).

A gray water system would divert all drains except toilets to landscaping. It's totally unclear how much that would conserve. In fact, I'd love to know the ratio of indoor to outdoor use. My guess is we use far more outside for landscaping.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Ipse-dixit/1002873616.1359049.1430409399370.JavaMail.yahoo%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Larry Rosenthal]

How much water did I just use sending this email?

[Craig Good]

I don’t think it’s all that bad. First, not all of the products you buy come from California. There are places with plenty of water.

Agriculture takes lots of water. So does much manufacturing. ’Twas ever thus. But water in California isn’t fully fungible: Nothing an almond farmer in the valley does is going to change how much water EBMUD has. We really have many mini-droughts, carved up by water district.

We’ve been using the drought bucket and “if it’s yellow let it mellow” for over a year at our house. I think it actually helps with EBMUD’s water supply. I’m not sweating how much water my jeans use because they came from very far away.

These are worth a look:

http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-0417-abcarian-almonds-demons-20150417-column.html

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-g-how-water-hungry-are-californias-nuts-20150408-htmlstory.html


Now ask me about how dumb bottled water is, especially bottled water from the Los Angeles municipal supply.

On Apr 30, 2015, at 08:26 AM, Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Accounting for indirect/virtual consumption, for all our efforts, Kate and I have been able to reduce our total per capita consumption by just about 0.23%.
>

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com
Sent from your iPhone

[Brian Howell]

Are you sure about those jeans? Yes, the thread was probably spun in China (I probably had dealings with the company responsible in the past year), and the fabric was probably woven in China, or elsewhere in the Far East, but you’d be surprised at how much of the original cotton is grown here in the U.S. and then sent overseas. And 5% to 8% of that cotton was grown in California.

And nearly all the fruits and vegetables, virtually all of the dairy, and much of the meat we consume is produced in-state, requiring huge amounts of water.

There is still a total water budget for the state. And a network of pumps and canals make diversions possible to mitigate extreme drought in a number of districts. Much of that budget’s inflow is from the Sacramento—which EBMUD also taps in dry years: http://www.freeportproject.org/nodes/explore/. Thus, we are competing for an increasingly scarce resource with your almond farmer, and most of the other agriculture in the state.

On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 9:33 AM, Craig Good <clg...@me.com> wrote:

I don’t think it’s all that bad. First, not all of the products you buy come from California. There are places with plenty of water.

Agriculture takes lots of water. So does much manufacturing. ’Twas ever thus. But water in California isn’t fully fungible: Nothing an almond farmer in the valley does is going to change how much water EBMUD has. We really have many mini-droughts, carved up by water district.

We’ve been using the drought bucket and “if it’s yellow let it mellow” for over a year at our house. I think it actually helps with EBMUD’s water supply. I’m not sweating how much water my jeans use because they came from very far away.

These are worth a look:

http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-0417-abcarian-almonds-demons-20150417-column.html

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-g-how-water-hungry-are-californias-nuts-20150408-htmlstory.html


Now ask me about how dumb bottled water is, especially bottled water from the Los Angeles municipal supply.

--

Brian Howell
www.linkedin.com/in/bdhowell

[Craig Good]

Huh. Well, I didn’t know that 10-14 percent of total U.S. cotton production was from California.

http://www.calcot.com/ourcotton.asp?post=cavar&flag=ourcotton

But I don’t buy jeans that often.

On Apr 30, 2015, at 10:25 AM, Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Are you sure about those jeans?

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

"Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves
in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of
your state."
--George Mason

[jack saunders]

I still water two young flowering trees I hope will make it.....but I serve them by hand, one bucket each per week.

 

---

From: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>
To: Craig Good <clg...@me.com>
Cc: Ipse-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2015 10:25 AM
Subject: Re: [Ipse Dixit] How much water do you use per day?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ipse Dixit" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Ipse-dixit+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Ipse-dixit/CAAq%2BNfcCquT1jVr4cF1s-aWj6Wag-YAee87kDZmZcrpBKFxZEw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Vince Koloski]

SFgate had this short but interesting piece on desal plants in California and State regs regarding them:

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Tapping-the-ocean-for-drinking-water-State-lays-6247262.php

[Craig Good]

I found an interesting take via Quora:

 

http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/ 

Of course, if we pay alfalfa farmers not to grow it, there'll be an immediate upward pressure on the price of everything that eats it.

[Jack Saunders]

One acre foot of water used by an alfalfa farmer yields $6000 in profit.

One acre foot of water used at an Intel fab yields $16m in profit.

Source: missed name....New "go-to" guy on water at Arizona State.  Got to catch up with him.  Last Tuesday Forum guest, KQED.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ipse Dixit" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Ipse-dixit+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Ipse-dixit/ffcba1a1-f6cb-4f33-957c-f1c10f60c208%40googlegroups.com.

[Craig Good]

Posted without endorsement or, I confess, even having read the entire thing.

https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/story/arizona-cotton-drought-crisis 

Skimming it was interesting, though.

[Brian Howell]

Seems that some of the folks down in Rancho Santa Fe are having a bit of a problem with forthcoming water rationing: after Gov. Brown declared mandatory cutbacks, the region's consumption increased 9%. 

One resident, Gay Butler, who owns a residence that sits on a grassy four acres is replacing her lawn with drought resistant landscaping, but is doing so grudgingly: “You could put 20 houses on my property, and they’d have families of at least four. In my house, there is only two of us,” Butler said. So “they’d be using a hell of a lot more water than we’re using.” Others in the area aren’t quite so generous...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rich-californians-youll-have-to-pry-the-hoses-from-our-cold-dead-hands/2015/06/13/fac6f998-0e39-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/22/rich_people_are_the_fking_worst_the_1_percents_vile_new_war_on_us_all/

[Scott Hotes]

Writing like this does more harm than good:

"The wealthiest Americans – and their apostles in government – tell us that it’s the poor people who are entitled, who take and exploit and keep more than they deserve. But that’s a half-truth, and a dangerous one at that. Entitlement has many faces, the most destructive of which is on display in Rancho Santa Fe. These adolescent upper-crusters are entitled because they believe they have a right to everything they can get hold of – regardless of the costs. They believe living with others carries no obligations. Anyone who places their right to pristine golf courses above their responsibility to respect communal resources is a social toxin, a privileged parasite eating away at the foundations of society. It’s important that their actions be seen in this context."

Who is that that's instigating class warfare?  The facts on record in the case are that a few people complained 

about not being able to water their lawns.  From that we arrive at:  social toxins, eating away at society...

If we're talking about the cost/benefit of our move into the Welfare state, maybe the following will even things out:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-the-harm-incurred-by-a-mushrooming-welfare-state/2015/01/21/d8cd15ae-a0d2-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.html

With the following quote from no less than Patrick Moynihan:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a lifelong New Deal liberal and accomplished social scientist, warned that “the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it but what it costs those who receive it.” As a growing portion of the population succumbs to the entitlement state’s ever-expanding menu of temptations, the costs, Eberstadt concludes, include a transformation of the nation’s “political culture, sensibilities, and tradition,” the weakening of America’s distinctive “conceptions of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and self-advancement,” and perhaps a “rending of the national fabric.” As a result, “America today does not look exceptional at all.”

Scott

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ipse Dixit" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Ipse-dixit+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Ipse-dixit/6346375d-fc13-4845-a578-56919f529d25%40googlegroups.com.

[Jack Saunders]

Good thoughts all, Scott.  I disagree with brother Moynihan.  I feel confident that that the talented tenth is keenly aware of the cost, and takes heroic steps behind the scenes to hold it in check.  

This is the founders' vision for the Supreme Court's role.  In ordinary times they look and play the role of judges, figuring out what to do about school segregation and Terri Schivo.  But they all know they are there to invalidate confiscatory acts government....and I'm for that.  We simply would not have talked our barons into democracy without that guarantee, they would have been fools to buy in absent such assurances, and all has worked out in the mushy middle. 

Hell, they didn't even invalidate the income tax!  Man!  That was the beginning of "the Washington consensus."

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Ipse-dixit/CAC7%2BDAB%3D5ec1pGhW4TqG_iA1SoD9nPFCgmR24PJ2Yp105P5gWQ%40mail.gmail.com.