Within one day last week I washed my face twice for 2 minutes each, brushed my teeth twice for 3 minutes each, showered in the morning for 10 minutes, showered in the evening for 20 minutes, and drank a total of 100 fluid oz of water. Although I forgot to take note of how many times I washed my hands that day, the total amount of water that I used for those things alone in one day was a lot. Typically when I think of my daily water use and my water footprint, I would have never thought that it would be as high as it was when calculated on https://www.watercalculator.org. Before using this website, I don’t think I ever realized how much things like food consumption and even your shopping habits can effect your water footprint. After taking the test, I was told that my daily use of water is about 2,982 gallons per day, which is significantly higher than the national US average of 2,200 gallons per day.
I am sure that many of my classmates would agree in that it was surprising to find out what some of the things that were affecting my water footprint the most were. For example, I have always known that our diets affect the environment, but was never fully aware that the amount of times you eat meat in a day can affect it that drastically. What surprised me the most was when I answered the question about my shopping habits. I am someone who will never pass up a shopping day, and even spend a good amount of time shopping online. As soon as I admitted this to the survey, the water line that ran across the screen began to rise until it was almost all the way to the top. It was aspects of the survey like these that led me to believe I may need to reconsider how I am spending my time every day.
In the US, I would guess that the many of people are not all that concerned with their water footprint because the vast majority of water comes from within the country. Given that water is a much hotter commodity in the Middle East, the relationship that people have with it is much different than that of the people living in the US. Specifically for the peninsula, they barely have any water coming from within the region, so most of it is coming from other regions. Because it is such a difficult material to get there is clearly going to be less of it, therefore there is going to be less for people to consume. This is undoubtedly going to effect many aspects of the regions politics and economy.
In an area where access to water is much more limited in the United States, its people are going to be forced to be more mindful of the amount of water they are consuming. Like I said earlier, before I took the water footprint survey I rarely thought about how much water I was using in a day, generally because it isn’t really of concern in the US. There are many things that are affected by the amount of water a country has, including the amount of food that can be produced, along with many other materials. From an economic standpoint, the more scarce the water supply is within a region, the more expensive it is going to be to get that water. The likelihood of corruption is also probably higher in these regions because the people could become upset with the government if they do not feel that they are doing enough to provide for their country, leading to possible outbreaks of violence. It is inevitable that having sufficient water supply is going to help a country survive without conflict given the amount of industries that need it to survive.
