[google is very unhelpful, it’s broken now. I can’t find any posts explaining the specific thing I want to know]
Was asked this question by a friend.
When we say that producing one item of clothing uses x amount of water. She doesn’t see the harm because the water used to grow cotton doesn’t disappear “it’s part of the cycle”.
Pollution must be a factor right? There is a difference between drinking water, saltwater and contaminated water? (Surely they’re not using clean drinking water for production?)
Exasperated by the fact that production is usually performed in areas with poor regulation/infrastructure.
(Is it inherently damaging, or damaging because of how it’s performed?)
Is the water “used” because it becomes vapor? Is it used because the molecules are taken apart? Either way shouldn’t this technically be reversible?
[I am not very articulate, and I find it very difficult to organize my thoughts to words. This question ended up frustratingly inprecise!]
Edit: thanks for the good responses:)
In: Biology
When we talk about water use it is almost always in the context of fresh water – water that plants and animals use to drink. This means relatively salt free and clean.
This water is not evenly distributed around the world so looking at it from a global context is mostly useless for particular localities like a town, district or farming area. So this idea of a “water cycle” is simply not very useful. What is most important is how, in these locations, the available fresh water is consumed and allocated to various uses. Fresh water is almost all derived from rain or snowfall. There are parts of the world where it can be pumped from deep underground but that is typically not the major problem.
Water is quite heavy and given the amount needed for farming and livestock, it is way too expensive to try to transport water long distances or up hills and mountains. It makes artificial redistribution a very difficult task.
Although there is a lot of saltwater in seas and oceans, it has the same problem. It is incredibly expensive to desalinate water in the amounts sufficient to do even a little bit of farming. Farming using desalinated water is impractical simply because the cost of desalination and the amount used would make the crops too expensive for people to buy.
This makes water use a big problem for areas with limited water. Population growth, the need for more food, cities and factories expanding all require more and more water. And once this water is used, it is no longer fresh and much of it flows down increasingly smaller and more polluted rivers into the sea. Of course there are also ecological concerns – using too much water from a river threatens fishes (which are usually a source of food).
Water use isn’t about how MUCH water is available in total, it is about where it is and how much is available in particular periods of time and how it is distributed among the various demands.
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