Consumer Goods Suck Up Surprising Amounts of Water

THE GIST:

• Researchers find far more indirect than direct water input in consumer goods.
• It takes more than 4,000 gallons of water to make a $20 bag of pet food.
• Researchers predict the end of cheap water around the corner.

Humans need water to live, but they tend to take the cheap commodity for granted, especially in industry.

The $1 bag of refined sugar in many American kitchens requires more than 283 gallons of water to produce. The $20 bag of dog food on store shelves takes more than 4,000 gallons.

Both calculations come from a recent Carnegie Mellon University study that investigated actual water use among 428 U.S. economic sectors.

"I think what really comes out is that goods and services have quite a bit of embodied water in them, so the industry that is providing the final product does not realize how much water they're actually using in the products they're selling," Chris Hendrickson, a civil and environmental engineering researcher at Carnegie Mellon, told Discovery News.

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Although industries typically report their direct water usage, more than one industry is involved in producing a single consumer good. There's the paper business that makes the packaging, the agricultural firm that provides the ingredients and the power companies that supply the energy for all the processes, to name a few.

The amount of water used for products and services can be shocking, especially to consumers who don't realize how much goes into what they're buying. That's why water footprint labels are getting more attention, as well as water footprint accounting for companies. Smart for business, smarter for the planet. - Jaymi Heimbuch, Tech and Transport

Hendrickson, together with his student Michael Blackhurst, calculated all water input used for these interrelated industries to shed light on the total amount of water that goes into the manufacturing of consumer products. Their work was published in the Feb. 23 edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The study reflects a growing awareness of the consequences of unchecked water consumption. In fact, a number of U.S. cities, including Las Vegas and Atlanta, are experimenting with graduated rate systems for water and have implemented tighter restrictions on how water may be used.

The developing world is being hit the hardest as water supplies dry up due to poor allocation, misuse or climate change. The United Nations estimates that one-quarter of the world's population, mostly among the poorest countries, won't have access to sanitary drinking water by 2025.

The United States doesn't necessarily have such dire prospects. As water becomes scarcer in more American cities, prices for water may rise across the board. Water bills will rise, but so too will the increased cost for water used to produce goods. These costs will be reflected in retail prices.

Water has long been considered common property; each person has as much claim to it as the next. But this also subjects this natural resource to what economists have dubbed the tragedy of the commons.

"We repeatedly engage in a frantic scramble to individually obtain as much as possible of depleting resources rather than cooperating in ways that could lead to sustainability for the community as a whole," explains Julie Suhr Nelson, adjunct assistant professor of economics at the University of Utah.

As a result, when water becomes scarce, lawsuits and resource conflicts tend to break out over water allocations and rights.

Realistic pricing of water does have a positive feedback loop, however. As prices increase, water becomes increasingly valuable in the mind of all consumers; conservation and improved utilization should occur naturally. As people get more clever about water use, supplies of the resource will have a chance to stabilize.

"I don't think we're even close as a country to running out of water. It's just going to be an issue of how much you're willing to spend locally to get it," Blackhurst says.