As we're approaching the end of this water-saving day I thought I'd write and share my experiences on how this day has progressed (irrelevant anecdote: this is my first ever blog post).

For me, waking up at a somewhat unchristian hour having to take a leak, the water-saving business began. After emptying my vessel I was just about to flush when I remembered our motto and battle cry: 'if it ain't brown don't flush it down!'. With a slight boost to my conscience - having saved some 6-10 liters of water - I stumbled back to bed, leaving the toilet and its contents waiting to surprise its next customer. Summing the less-flushing aspect up, I have - to my mother's great dismay - yet so far only flushed once today.

A few hours later the alarm rang. Still with my water-saving mode turned on, I got myself dressed and sat down for breakfast. Then, without realizing how bad I was about to fail staying within the 25 liter á day that we had set out for, I started eating. After consulting waterfootprint.org, I now gather that the clothes I was wearing would've required at least 5000 litres of water to produce, the bread I ate at least 120 litres and the two eggs approximately 400 litres. By drinking 0,5l of water instead of milk, I did, however, save some 35 liters of water (1l milk requires 70l of water). 

1,2 liters of cold shower water.

Then it was time to hit der shower. In order to save every ounce of water I brought a bowl with me, which I filled with the cold water that comes out first before it gets warm, saving some 1,2 liters. Later I used this water to cook my lunch, brush my teeth, wash my hands and fill our cats' water bowl up twice.

The lunch I ate consisted of a big portion of pasta, two carrots and a tomato. All in all, perhaps some 500 liters of water was used to produce my lunch. Note, however, that I did not eat any meat during the day. Had I swapped my carrots and tomato for the equivalent amount of meat, the liters of water used to producing my lunch would have risen rampantly as 1kg of meat requires approximately 15 000l of water to be produced.

My day continued and I went off to school for the afternoon, where I consumed nothing but one cup of coffee, which required some 140 liters of water to be made.

Coming home from school I continued my one-day vegetarian diet with a sandwich meal consisting of four slices of bread, 2 eggs, lettuce, 2 slices of cheese and a glass of water. To produce my meal some 600 liters of water would have been used.

Now, as soon as I've brushed my teeth using up the last of the water I saved from this morning's shower, I'm off to bed. Reflecting back on this day, it strikes me that at least 1,500 liters of water was used to produce the food that I consumed. For the average Swede, however, the same figure would be 4,000 liters, which shows that I, to some extent, have succeeded in using less water. It's not a secret that much of it lies in my decision not to eat any meat during the day.

Arguably, most of my actions today was just of symbolic value and wouldn't do much good in the long run. As a sort of conclusion, however, I would suggest that - in order to reduce our wasteful water usage - one major thing could be to eat in a more sustainable way. Even if we're not willing to give up meat (I know I'm not) I believe that by looking over our diets and reducing our meat consumption we could save vast amounts of fresh water resources.

Over and out
/Isak

End of day

So far we've all done really well but it's harder in the evening. While preparing food you wash your hands, boil water and need to clean all the dishes which used up around 4L of water. All our meals are still vegetarian due to the fact meat production uses almost twice as much water as any other food production process. I am being careful not to flush the toilet, use the dish washer or to leave water running when doing activities such as washing hands and cleaning my teeth. Showers are limited to around two minutes and water that runs cold while awaiting a warm shower is collected and reused to avoid wasting water. I have been wary of how much water I consume as an individual during one day and this activity has heightened my awareness of what I can do to prevent wasting water on a daily basis.

Update 1: Lunch time

So far, all three researchers have used the minimal amount of water. For breakfast, only 0.5L or less was used, and if showers were taken in the morning, they were kept under 2 minutes. For lunch, we chose a vegetarian meal (due to the fact that meat industries use an obscene amount of water to make their meat). So far, we are all doing well with the minimal water alteration. The only thing that is hard is to avoid flushing toilets and being limited in our eating habits. We all try to keep the tap off as much as possible, even relying on hand sanitizer instead of water and soap to wash our hands. More updates to come...