Municipal Water District of Orange County Points to Meat Products as Biggest Water Wasters
The Municipal Water District of Orange County shared this graphic this week on their Facebook page, writing, "It might surprise you just how much water is used to produce things we use every day!" The graphic clearly shows that the top water wasters (in the bottom right corner) are meat products. (And luckily we don't eat a new set of tires every day!)
This is coming from a municipal water district, so hopefully more people will start to take this seriously, as we urgently need them to.
The water district is certainly not alone in their message. Leading water scientists from The Stockholm International Water Institute predicted in 2013 that food shortages in the future will dictate a global transition to vegetarian diets by 2050, saying, "Adopting a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in an increasingly climate-erratic world." They noted that animal protein-rich food consumes five to 10 times more water than a vegetarian diet, and that one third of the world's arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals.
See a collection of articles about the connection between animal agriculture and water shortages.