Organize a "Save Water Go Vegan" Overpass Light Brigade in Your City!

The meat and dairy industry has once again pulled the wool over the public's eyes. Despite being responsible for nearly half of California's water footprint per Pacific Institute, with all charts showing that livestock feed receives far more water than any other crop (yes, far more than almonds), the media barely mentions this when covering California's devastating drought and water shortages. From their coverage, you would think fruits, vegetables, and nuts – all far more water efficient and nutritious choices – are the culprits. Amazing.

There is also lots of attention paid to fracking and Nestle's water bottling operations. Although we certainly don't agree with what these industries are doing, they are receiving a disproportionate amount of attention compared to the much larger water guzzler of animal agriculture. These industries consume less in an entire year than what California's meat and dairy industry consumes in a single day.

Fracking consumes 70 million per year (Reuters per state officials) and Nestle 705 million (the Desert Sun). Comparatively, animal agriculture consumes 190 million per DAY per USGS, which is over 69 billion gallons – WITHOUT counting the irrigation water used to grow the animals' feed, which is where the vast majority of their water footprint actually lies. Including this, using Pacific Institute's report and converting acre feet to trillions of gallons, that brings the total amount of water used by California's meat and dairy industry to something like 6.6 trillion gallons per year. We have not found a number published for this anywhere, but this our best estimate using the numbers available. Yet not one drop of our precious water needs to be used in this way.

So we know that most of California's consumptive water goes to meat and dairy and, per National Geographic, that a vegan diet saves 600 gallons of water a day. Therefore, adopting a plant-based vegan diet is the single most significant effort an individual can make to save water. Taking one minute shorter showers save 2.5 gallons (commonly cited figure) and skipping a day watering the average lawn saves an average of 48 (crunched using EPA numbers). ‪Not quite going to save the water we need.

The public's awareness of all this is changing fast, but at a snail's pace. Organize an Overpass Light Brigade in your own community!

Thanks to Overpass Light Brigade - San Diego, Barb Dunsmore for organizing and photos, John Nicksic for photos, every single wonderful person behind these letters (including the college student who walked by and decided to join us!) and, of course, all supportive honks.

Get more thoroughly sourced facts about this issue and order leaflets, restaurant signs, and lawn signs here on our website. We can change this together.