Embedded Water

Water is essential in everyday life.  It is crucial for survival, and it is said that you need water every couple of days in order to survive.  According to the site http://www.virtualhospice.ca/en_US/Main+Site+Navigation/Home/Support/Support/Asked+and+Answered/Nutrition/How+long+can+someone+live+without+food+or+water_.aspx
an exact amount of time that a person can go without water is unknown due to the fact that everyone responds different to the amount of fluids they intake.  It is said that a person can go only a few days without water because it starts to have negative health affects on someone.  So it is clear that water is very important to life and critical for survival, but water, clean, drinking water, is rare to find in some areas of the world, even in the US today.  California has had a horrible drought that is causing their water supply to be shortened and obviously in high demand.  People are having to go to the local fire departments to get water because there is no water coming to their houses.  Countries around the world have little to no access to clean drinking water and are forced to use dirty, polluted water for their water needs.  This leads to so many health problems it is ridiculous.  So with that being said, shouldn't there be an effort to try and save water as much as possible?  Well what if I told you that you use lot more water than you think you do?  How could this be you ask?  Well, this is called embedded water.  According to the site http://www.waterwise.org.uk/pages/embedded-water.html embedded water is all of the water that is used in making food and/or non-food things like the clothing you buy or the beer you drink.  Water is used in the production of making clothing and also in the making of alcoholic beverages, so the water that you get from the sink or use for a shower is not the only water that you use!  You use water in a lot more ways than you probably could ever imagine.  Also on the same site it is said that  person in Britain uses about one hundred and fifty liters of water from the tap per day.  However, when you look into the embedded water products used as well, that number per day of water usage increases all the way up to 3400 liters per day!  That is a huge difference from what most people think their water usage would be.  So, what kinds of things do people use everyday that they may not know uses water?  Well, according to the site http://waterfootprint.org/en/resources/interactive-tools/product-gallery/ , milk powder, wine, bio-diesel, leather, cucumbers, coffee, and chocolate all use water.  How does water usage relate to products that aren't food related you my ask?  Well, a cow can produce about 6 kg of leather.  In a cows lifetime, the water footprint of a cow is about 1,890,000 liters.  the majority of this water is derived in the beef of the cow, however there is a portion of the water from the cow that is derived from the leather.  So, leather clothing, bags, etc. all use water or have water in them due where the product came from.  There are so many things you use in a day that you may not even know needed water to be used in the manufacturing process to cool a machine or to be mixed with to make a pigment for something.  I hope this article was helpful in describing how water is used a lot more than the typical uses, like cooking and showering, but also in the formation of non-food products, as well as in foods themselves.