Looks a bit grotty
My treasures, both of them.
In the foreground is Lixo P. Cat examining my recently acquired ‘table top’.
Looks a bit grotty at the moment (the drum top, not the cat) but I have great hopes that it will clean up well; then I have to find ‘legs’ strong enough to support it because it’s heavy.
Now all I have to do is overcome the inertia of procrastination. It has to dry first, that’s not a justification… It has been out in the rain. The white stuff is mould that has appeared as it dries. Updates as the work progresses.
Click for full post
On with this week’s CTWW.
I can’t complain about the difficulty of this one, because it comes about from an article that I pointed Small at some time ago.
“the water we use “behind the scenes” … the water it takes to grow our food, produce our stuff, etc. We’ve done challenges to reduce our direct water use … let’s dig a bit deeper, shall we?” – blurb by Small.
This week, consider your water footprint, particularly your indirect water use.
There’s actually quite a bit more, so click on the CTWW banner above to read the rest.
This is an interesting challenge because it looks at the water we use that we don’t see.
Okay, I have done the Extended Calculator suggested by Small, here’s the result:
My annual water footprint is 1848 cubic metres per year.
Beef, pork and poultry by Daniel Eskridge
Remember, I am living alone with Lixo P. Cat.
Clearly my biggest enemy is meat; two thirds of my water footprint.
I can change my habits here and eat more pork and chicken which have a smaller water footprint than beef and I can eat more fish.
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Bloggers turn coffee into great blog posts
I am loathe to swap coffee for tea. While I like tea, I need coffee to write quality blog posts, tea just doesn’t cut the mustard there.
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How does this compare with your calculations? I would be interested to see, leave a comment with a link for me to visit.
Update:
Since I wrote this post I posted on Life is but a Labyrinth and it includes some watery details, that may entertain/surprise/shock you.
Eco-Crap 
Posted by smallftprints on March 27, 2013 at 12:46 pm
Mine came in at 180 cubic metres per year. Food was the largest category. The surprise is that in the food category my biggest use comes from drinking coffee/tea (1 cup of coffee and 2 glasses of tea a day). The next largest category is cereal so I’m going to consider replacing some rice meals with other grains … I’ll have to do some investigation.
Lixo P. is pretty darn cute (btw, what’s the “P” stand for?). How will you remove the mold from the table? I’ve heard that spraying vinegar on it will do the trick but haven’t ever tried it. Oh … your post on Labyrinth is pretty shocking. I can’t imagine how it must smell in that area … and to think that it becomes your drinking water … ugh!
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Posted by argentumvulgaris on March 27, 2013 at 12:56 pm
>SF, a quick reply while lunch is heating…
Okay, yours was very low, but then you don’t ‘do’ meat. If you cut meat out of mine, then I guess it would be similar. As an after thought, I thought of the idea of a ‘beef free’ week once a month, I’ll write about that in next week’s intro.
P = Pussy… you had to ask?
I’ll try that vinegar idea. Once it’s dried I’ll attack it with sandpaper.
I have updated my post on Life… with an image.
AV
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Posted by smallftprints on March 27, 2013 at 2:08 pm
A beef-free week would certainly cut down the numbers. In all fairness, I found it difficult to estimate the amount of water I use for watering my container garden … and probably guesstimated too low … so I’ll be paying more attention to my use and checking with the calculator again towards the end of summer. Hopefully my numbers won’t go up too much. Off to see the new image at Labyrinth. Yeah, I had to ask … and should have known. LOL!
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Posted by livingsimplyfree on March 27, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Mine came in a 485 I wasn’t sure where that stood until now. It’s too high compared to others. My savings comes from not eating meat, but I still eat eggs. My biggest number came from watering the garden. I based it on last year when we had drought conditions so if we get a normal season that number should go down. Either way, I would rather use the water to grow as much of my own food as I can rather than have all the pesticides or the fuel to truck it to the store.
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Posted by argentumvulgaris on March 27, 2013 at 4:07 pm
>lsf, wow, that’s almost as low as Small’s when compared to my whopper.
AV
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Posted by livingsimplyfree on March 27, 2013 at 5:43 pm
I need to tweak a couple of things but I think I can get it lower in time. I’m going to check back now and then and see if I can get my numbers lower.
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Posted by Talking about a water footprint… | Eco-Crap on March 28, 2013 at 9:24 am
[…] « Change the World Wednesday – 27th […]
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Posted by Bollocks | Life is but a Labyrinth on April 3, 2013 at 1:14 pm
[…] have resolved to eat less beef. I discovered that beef has a huge water footprint. See posts here and here on Eco-Crap. But I love my BBQ… I have actually resolved to have beefless weeks each […]
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