Groxie

I recently read a great article about personal carbon emissions from Sierra Magazine. The author goes through some trouble to calculate his emissions, and then he attempts to live under 3 different emissions requirements. He begins with the typical American’s emissions, then scales back to the world average, and finally, to the amount that the planet can accept sustainably. His journey makes for an interesting story, and he concludes that personal action alone is just not enough to change the tide. I agree completely. But before you give up hope, read the article—he does manage to end upbeat.

I am inspired to attempt something similar—a water diet. First I am going to have to spend some solid research time to get my ducks in a row. I’ll start by assessing my own average water use over the course of a week. The American average is 350 liters/day for residential uses. This includes water for washing, cooking, drinking, toilets, and watering lawns and gardens.

Next I’ll attempt to lower my use to the world average of 139 liters/day. In the meantime, I’ll try to dig up some numbers for sustainable planet use. I will spend the last week using this amount, or the 50/day needed for basic health and activities.

Residential use figures do not include the water used to grow or process food or other items, but in the spirit of the experiment I will also keep track of the foods I consume to lower my impact there as well. This means I probably won’t be indulging in any beer or soda for the last 2 weeks of the diet. Eating low on the food chain will be an even bigger priority than usual, since processing often eats up tons of water.

I’ll update you on how much water I consume and how I go about decreasing it to meet the various targets.

Update: Here are the reports from Week 1 and Week 2