More on Water and Water Bottles

I have received the following comment from Deb Youngest, in our Engineering Department:

"Interesting reading. On the point of the environmental impact that comes along with drinking from plastic bottles, it made me think of a photo series that drew my attention a few years ago. Chris Jordan. “Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait.”  I’ve only seen the pictures on the internet; I imagine it is quite more impactful to see them life-size (on five-foot by ten-foot canvas):

http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#plastic-bottles  - “two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.” (if you use the Click to Zoom feature, you’ll see the image contains quite a few water bottles in amongst the pop and Gatorade detritus).
http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#caps-seurat – “400,000 plastic bottle caps, equal to the average number of plastic bottles consumed in the United States every minute."

Maybe the numbers in Canada are lower but I think they would still be pretty high. Meanwhile, did you know that the average person in the Okanagan uses 675 litres of water each day? Wow is the expression that comes to mind. This is more than twice as much water than the average Canadian uses, which is 329 litres per day. Clearly the Okanagan average is high and needs to be addressed, especially when we have less water available to us than almost anywhere in Canada. Interestingly, the average resident in France uses 150 litres per day and, in water-stressed Israel, people use 135 litres per day.

The figure of 675 L/day is an annual average for all Okanagan residents. Our use in the summer is actually much higher than in the winter. Residents in the North Okanagan, where they receive more precipitation, use less water than South Okanagan residents who live in Canada's only pocket of desert.

Should I say more?

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