7 Reasons Why I Am Vegan: 2. For The Water

Vittoria
Jan 2, 2018
5 min read

Welcome to my series 7 Reasons Why I Am Vegan (and so could you)! In honour of Veganuary I will publish everyday on the first week of January 2018 from Monday 1st to Friday 7th, and by the end of the week I will explore all the motives that compelled me to choose this lifestyle. As I mentioned before, I believe in the power of information and even if you feel like this is not for you, you might end up discovering something you didn’t know and make a more informed choice going forward.

We don’t often realise that the animal farming industry and agriculture sector use an incredible amount of water for the crops that feed the animals we end up eating. The same industries are responsible for water shortage and water pollution, in addition to a great deal of damage to our oceans! So my second reason for being vegan is WATER!

Water Is Not Forever

Humans can survive without food for up to thirty days however after three we would die of thirst because our bodies are almost 60% water, and new born babies are 75% water. It is also theorized that the first organism on our planet was born in water. Water is life! Yet we are treating it as a commodity that will never run out.

“NASA observed thirty-seven of the world’s largest aquifers over a ten-year period from 2003 to 2013 by a satellite project called GRACE. Of the 37 aquifers studied, 21 are being depleted at an unsustainable rate. And of those, eight were classified as “over-stressed” in the study, meaning they have little or no water recharging them at the present time.”

"The results imply the global water situation is much worse than suggested by previous studies, which estimated such scarcity impacts between 1.7 billion and 3.1 billion people". Over 4 billion people live with severe water scarcity for at least one month every year, according to a recent analysis. The results show water shortages far worse than previously thought. In 2016 water crises were rated as one of three greatest risks of harm to people and economies in the next decade by the World Economic Forum, alongside climate change and mass migration.

Water Waste & Water Pollution

Globally, the agricultural sector consumes about 70% of the planet's accessible freshwater – more than twice that of industry (23%), and dwarfing municipal use (8%).

In turn it takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, 477 gallons of water are required to produce 1 lb. of eggs, almost 900 gallons of water are needed for 1 lb. of cheese; while only 25 gallons to produce one pound of wheat. Animal agriculture water consumption ranges from 34-76 trillion gallons annually and growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56% of water in the US.

"When you concentrate these animals in massive factory farm facilities, it is incredibly difficult to keep these giant facilities clean without using a massive amount of water. To run the flushing systems that clean excrement off the floors of dairy farms, 150 gallons of water are required per cow, every single day. In fact, the majority of water used in factory farms does not go towards hydrating animals, but rather to cleaning and processing animals during slaughter."

This is because animals in farms produce approximately 130 times more waste than the entire human population combined!

Only 45% of factory farms have discharge permits to drain the waste from their cesspools, however an estimated 75% of farms contribute to pollution, unregulated. What is even more disturbing is that once the water is polluted with animal waste, it will be contaminated with antibiotics, hormones and bacteria and therefore it should not be returned to the water system.

Impact On the Oceans

"Fertilizers, manure, waste and ammonia turns into nitrate that reduces the amount of oxygen present in water which results in the death of many aquatic animals. Again, bacteria and parasites from animal waste can get into drinking water which can pose serious health hazards for various aquatic life and animals." The fertilizers that runoff from farms and lawns is a huge problem for coastal areas because the extra nutrients cause eutrophication – “flourishing of algal blooms that deplete the water's dissolved oxygen and suffocate other marine life”. If that wasn’t bad enough in many parts of the world, sewage flows untreated, or under-treated, are dumped into the ocean: 80% of urban sewage is discharged into the Mediterranean Sea untreated.

Even the tiniest plankton, whales and polar bears have all been contaminated with man-made chemicals, such as pesticides via water pollution. Almost every marine organism has come in contact with pollutants including toxic material such as chemical weapons, and radioactive waste!

Impact On People

Water pollution and water shortage has a great impact on people around the world. 844 million people in the world – one in ten – do not have clean water. Roughly two billion people around the world rely on groundwater as their source of fresh water and with aquifers currently being depleted, that means two billion people are at risk of losing the water they use for drinking, cooking, and cleaning.

Besides, with the increase in water pollution people can easily become contaminated either directly from household products or by eating polluted seafood and animal fats. It has been proven that a number of man-made chemicals found in fish and seafood can cause serious health problems, including cancer, damage to the immune system, behavioral problems, and reduced fertility . A study shows that heavy metals and other contaminants can accumulate in seafood and make it harmful to eat and more than one-third of the shellfish-growing waters of the United States are adversely affected by coastal pollution.

That fish is exported all over the world!