- Become a vegan! If this is not possible, try becoming a vegetarian. If neither of those options are a possibility, try having ‘meatless mondays’, which is not as expensive as the other options, and allows you to lessen your water footprint.
- Educate others about how much water producing animal products and other foods actually use.
- Cook vegan meals for yourself others. Try to use locally sourced ingredients and fresh produce that doesn’t have packaging. By showing others how easy and delicious vegan meals can be, you may just encourage someone to change their diet.
- Explore your local vegan restaurants. This can give you ideas for meals to recreate yourself. Research where they source their food and keep in mind what kind of ingredients they use. Though they don’t use meat in their products, they may use nuts, which take a lot of water to process.
- Start drinking tea instead of coffee. It takes much more water to produce coffee than tea, as coffee uses about 840 L per pot, and tea only uses 90 L per pot. Tea also is better for you and contains different antioxidants and boost your immune system.
- Find out what your water footprint is online. You can find out what areas of your life you should cut down your water usage in, and what areas you are proficient in. This can help you figure out how to make changes in your lifestyle to conserve water.
- Eat more fresh and/or locally sourced foods and less processed foods. It takes a lot of water at each point of production and during transportation, so choosing food with the least amount of steps to create the food, package it, and transport it is ideal.
- Carpool, use public transportation, ride a bike, or walk places. It takes “3/4 of a gallon of water to extract, refine and transport the gas used to drive one mile”, and most people drive many miles a day. By carpooling or using public transportation, you use less water. By biking or walking, you use even less.
- In your bathroom: take shorter showers, make sure you fully shut off the water and reuse your towel a couple times before washing. Additionally, adopt the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” ideology of not flushing the toilet every time you use it. And make sure to fully turn off the sink when you wash your hands or brush your teeth.
- This is another issue one can take to lessen their water footprint, and it has to do with clothing. Try to purchase items that you know are sustainably made or purchase clothing at a thrift store! It takes many gallons of water to make clothing, and not buying brand new items every time you shop saves a lot of water.
The items I have chosen to do are 1, 2, 3, 6, and 10, though I expect to do more. These items highlight my main focus of veganism while also exploring the issue of water usage as a whole. Action items #2 and #3 highlight the root cause of lack of information, education, and the ignorance of Americans regarding water use and eating habits. By completing these two action items, more people will be able to talk about the water usage issue, and I may be able to encourage some people to change their diets or how they source their food in order to conserve water.
I am not expecting to face too many hard challenges throughout my month of action. The action plans I picked will not be incredibly hard to carry out, and I chose these on purpose to be easy to achieve by the average college student. I know that I will most likely not be able to convince anyone to go vegan. However, I hope to educate them and help them try other items on the list.
I hope to learn more about my water footprint during this month of action. I hope to learn how to embrace my vegan diet and a more water conscious lifestyle. I also hope to figure out cost effective ways to reduce my footprint, as it is often more expensive to buy local foods and local clothing.
Sources:
https://en.reset.org/act/save-water-reduce-your-water-footprint
http://www.besthealthmag.ca/best-you/home-and-family/5-ways-to-reduce-your-water-footprint/view-all/
https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20161223/coffee-vs-tea-is-one-better-health#1
https://printage.wordpress.com/category/environment/water-footprint/
It takes a Bathtub of Water to Produce One Cup of Coffee…