water facts

did you know…

Water Available on Earth

  • Traditional dyeing takes 7 to 75 gallons of water per pound of fabric.
  • Fiber for one cotton T-shirt requires 713 gallons of water.
  • Each year synthetic textile dyeing:
    • consumes 2.4 trillion gallons of water, that’s 3,700,000 Olympic-size swimming pools
    • uses 2.8 trillion megajoules of energy enough to power more than 12 percent of our homes in the United States
    • produces 568 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, which is the same as the emissions from 94 million cars
  • Only .5 percent of the Earth’s water is available for human use.
  • Fewer than 10 countries “own” 60 percent of the planet’s fresh water: Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Indonesia, Russia and the United States.
  • The “water footprint” in the United States is 2,480 cubic meters per person. The global water footprint is 1,240 cubic meters per capita.
  • The average person in the United States uses anywhere from 80-100 gallons of water per day. Flushing the toilet actually takes up the largest amount of this water.
  • Water shortages near water bottling plants have been reported all over, including Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Florida and Texas
  • World-wide, agriculture accounts for 70 percent of the fresh water use. In India and China, more than 80 percent of their fresh water goes towards irrigation.
  • More than a billion people do not have access to clean drinking water.
  • Every year, more than 1.5 million children under the age of five die from dehydration due to lack of clean water.
  • The textile industry is the third largest consumer and polluter of the world’s water. Synthetic textiles account for 2/3 of the production.

there is hope

  • New technologies, such as AirDye®, are being announced every day which can make the hard choices ahead much easier.
  • The United Nations Millennium Development Goal is on track to bring clean drinking water to more than 90 percent of the planet by 2015.
  • Every dollar invested in improving water supply or sanitation can bring as much as $12 in economic development.

sources:

United Nations. “The United National World Water Development Report 3. Chapter 7.” 2009 http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr/wwdr3/pdf/18_WWDR3_ch_7.pdf.
United Nations.  “Water in a Changing World; The United National World Water Development Report 3.”2009. http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr/wwdr3/pdf/WWDR3_Facts_and_Figures.pdf.
World Business Council for Sustainable Development.  “Water Facts and Trends. Facts and Trends: Water.” 2005.  http://www.wbcsd.org/web/publications/Water_facts_and_trends.pdf.
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