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Water Footprint Research Paper

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Virtual water exists in a variety of different industries beyond food-based agriculture. First off, we could also look into beverage choices. While food is often looked into for water footprints, beverages can also have a significant impact. If each member of the dinner party consumes one serving of wine and one serving of beer, each person is adding 52 gallons for a total of 520 gallons of water for those servings of beverages alone. Instead of looking to alcoholic or other high water-footprint liquids, water itself could be consumed or an alternative such as tea where one serving is other equal to 9 gallons of water for its footprint. One of the next industries to look into beyond consumption completely otherwise would be transportation. Transportation has many different factors to look into. Looking at water footprint alone, gasoline and diesel requires the smallest water footprint of 0.55 gal/mile of withdrawal and 0.08 gal/mile of consumption. Electricity has a withdrawal of 7.8 gal/mile and a consumption of 0.24 gal/mile signaling the highest water footprint. Biofuels have a withdrawal of 0.49 gal/mile and a consumption of 0.30 gal/mile. Looking at this alone, it would appear that gasoline and diesel is the best option. However, when we consider both potential pollution, …show more content…

The water footprint for energy is substantial. The energy required to provide 100 gallons of clean water requires 300 gallons of water to produce. Therefore, reducing energy consumption could drastically assist in reducing water footprints. Therefore, when preparing all food during Thanksgiving, water waste should be kept to a minimum so that energy is not wasted in distribution and heating of this water. Additionally, electricity waste should be minimized with typical methods such as turning off electronics that are not necessary and using alternative energy methods may prove to be

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