Water.
That's the topic of today's Blog Action Day -- an annual event in which bloggers from all over the world post about the same issue to raise awareness and trigger discussion about a topic that affects all of us.
Water is already one of my favorite topics.
So today I decided to wear 400 gallons of it.
How, exactly? A big bowl that fits over my head? A dress with special compartments filled with the clear stuff?
I don't have to get that complicated. I just have to throw on a plain, cotton t-shirt.
Yep...according to Treehugger, that's about how much water it takes to grow the cotton to make one cotton t-shirt: 400 gallons.
Hard to believe, right?
Between my husband and I, we have over 40 cotton t-shirts, which means we have used 16,000 gallons of water. Never mind drinking, brushing our teeth, flushing the toilet or cooking. This was just for souvenirs from old Dylan and Duran Duran concerts.
I freaked. This is me we're talking about. The one that yells at the people in the bathroom for running the water. The one that complains about guys hosing down sidewalks on a rainy day. And here I am with a chest of drawers that holds enough water to fill over 33 hot tubs! [Note: avg. hot tub holds 475 gallons]
And it's not just our clothing that's a problem.
That's the topic of today's Blog Action Day -- an annual event in which bloggers from all over the world post about the same issue to raise awareness and trigger discussion about a topic that affects all of us.
Water is already one of my favorite topics.
So today I decided to wear 400 gallons of it.
How, exactly? A big bowl that fits over my head? A dress with special compartments filled with the clear stuff?
I don't have to get that complicated. I just have to throw on a plain, cotton t-shirt.
Yep...according to Treehugger, that's about how much water it takes to grow the cotton to make one cotton t-shirt: 400 gallons.
Hard to believe, right?
Between my husband and I, we have over 40 cotton t-shirts, which means we have used 16,000 gallons of water. Never mind drinking, brushing our teeth, flushing the toilet or cooking. This was just for souvenirs from old Dylan and Duran Duran concerts.
I freaked. This is me we're talking about. The one that yells at the people in the bathroom for running the water. The one that complains about guys hosing down sidewalks on a rainy day. And here I am with a chest of drawers that holds enough water to fill over 33 hot tubs! [Note: avg. hot tub holds 475 gallons]
And it's not just our clothing that's a problem.
According to the Blog Action Day website:
-38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water all over the world.
-A lack of water contributes to poverty, with parents and children too ill or too busy collecting water to go to school and work.
-Nearly one billion people lack basic access to safe drinking water.
-Nearly one billion people lack basic access to safe drinking water.
-Even though people in the US have access to clean water from their taps, they drink an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled.
We take water for granted. It's something that is always there for us and we use it as if it were an unlimited resource...but it's not.
So the next time I go to a concert and want to take home a Simon LeBon T-shirt, I'll think, do I also need to be taking home all that water? Instead, I'll save the $35 and invest it in more H2O-friendly fabrics like bamboo or hemp.
Water makes up 60% of our bodies. It doesn't need to make up that much of our wardrobe.
We take water for granted. It's something that is always there for us and we use it as if it were an unlimited resource...but it's not.
So the next time I go to a concert and want to take home a Simon LeBon T-shirt, I'll think, do I also need to be taking home all that water? Instead, I'll save the $35 and invest it in more H2O-friendly fabrics like bamboo or hemp.
Water makes up 60% of our bodies. It doesn't need to make up that much of our wardrobe.
Join me in taking inventory of our closets and see whether you have a pond, a lake or an ocean.
2 comments:
This is really good question to think about..
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When I was thinking about what to write for Blog Action Day, I knew I wanted to take a different approach to the topic and came up with clothing...so happy you liked it!
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