World Water Day is coming up fast! It's THIS Thursday! March 22nd! The world water Day 2012 website home page has some very interesting pieces of information about water, and more specifically our consumption of water. Here are some words from the WWD website:

There are 7 billion people to feed on the planet today and another 2 billion are expected to join by 2050. Statistics say that each of us drinks from 2 to 4 litres of water every day, however most of the water we ‘drink’ is embedded in the food we eat: producing 1 kilo of beef for example consumes 15,000 litres of water while 1 kilo of wheat ’drinks up’ 1,500 litres.

 When a billion people in the world already live in chronic hunger and water resources are under pressure we cannot pretend the problem is ‘elsewhere’. Coping with population growth and ensuring access to nutritious food to everyone call for a series of actions we can all help with:

-          follow a healthier, sustainable diet;

-          consume less water-intensive products;

-          reduce the scandalous food wastage: 30% of the food produced worldwide is never eaten and the water used to produce it is definitively lost!

-          produce more food, of better quality, with less water.

I find it hard to think about water as a finite resource, because our water is essentially a system which cannot "loose" water. However, water is not always accessible. It can be wasted in a sense, because when it is used to water lawns for example, the groundwater can leak down to the water table - especially is dry climates! Just as it takes time for tree's to grow back to their size, it takes time for water to become accessible once more. If we continue to exploit this resource, it will no longer be accessible in the forms we desire.

In honour or World Water Day - I started a poll to see what people think we should challenge ourselves with. The winner by votes was to reduce shower and bath time in hopes to decrease water consumption. I have challenged myself to decrease my shower time to 25 mins this week. I will start this challenge tomorrow, and continue until next Tuesday, the 27th. Although I am not sure that 25 mins per week is a sustainable reduction in shower time, I do hope that completing this challenge will encourage me to reduce my shower time for the future.

Here at UBCO, we are also celebrating World Water Day! UBCO is putting on several events this week which are focused on awareness of water issues, water sustainability and food/water security. I encourage you all to check it out! I am also helping out at the sustainability desk that we have partenered with - to share information on our blog and gain information about water security!