The Worlds Water Crisis
Every time you turn on the tap, the shower, flush your toilet. Do you ever wonder where that came from. Because I know I don’t. It seems like the supply of water is endless as we can rely on an endless supply of water whenever we want. However, all though we would like to think that everyone has that privilege only 7 in 10 people can count on having clean water in their homes. And in the future this fraction of people is sadly likely to decrease instead of increase.
Cape town, London, Istanbul, Barcelona and Mexico City is just a few of many cities face their own day zero in the next few decades if we don’t change their water demand and in 2040 most of the world won’t have enough water to meet demand all year-round and there is no substitute for water as we will all die within a few days without it. Only 8% of freshwater is used for personal use most is used in manufacturing and agriculture. For example it takes 130 litres in a cup of coffee, 2,500 litres for a cotton shirt and 1,650 quarter pound hamburger.
The thing is; we have 326 million trillion gallons of water; always have and always will. However, 97% of water is salt water, 2% if frozen freshwater (which we can’t access) which means that all of human kind relies on 1%. The world population is 7.7 billion and is growing rapidly which means that more people are consuming more water and access to that 1% is decreasing.
There is one option to solve this: de-salination. Which involves purifying seawater. De-salination has more than doubled over the last decade but the amount that we make a year still adds up to less than 1% of the water that we use. This is because it is very expensive and requires large amounts of energy to obtain. Which means that in turn water in everything would cost more and the price of consumer goods is predicted to skyrocket.
So next time you turn on the tap to wash our hands remember to turn it off properly and use as little as possible to ensure that the price of your precious Jaffa cakes/[insert favourite food here] will increase as little as possible.
Amy Turner
