Western Australia's Water Minister Simone McGurk says decades-old arrangements allowing millions of litres of groundwater to be extracted free of charge for sale as bottled water should be reviewed as the state faces a drying climate.
  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    According to this map:

    https://www.cbc.ca/polopoly_fs/1.3117673.1434572717!/fileImage/httpImage/aquifer-depletion.jpg

    Australia’s got one aquifer in eastern Australia that’s rapidly growing, and one in northwestern Australia that’s being depleted at a pretty good clip. Where’s the well in question?

    Armadale, Australia.

    checks

    Southwestern Australia. Not on the aquifer map in question.

    Looks like it’s the Yarragadee Aquifer.

    EDIT: My guess, though, is that if the water is being used for soda that people drink, it probably isn’t a whole lot in relative terms. Out here in California, we’ve got serious aquifer depletion, but drinking water is basically a rounding error relative to other uses, like agriculture, lawns, stuff like that.

    Like, I had a hamburger last night. I think it had maybe half a pound of beef.

    googles

    https://www.verymeaty.com/fresh-meat/beef/how-much-water-goes-into-one-pound-of-beef/

    According to research, it takes approximately 1,847 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/food-water-footprint_n_5952862

    According to this, a pound of tofu is 302 gallons, for the vegan crowd, if you’re eating imitation beef.

    But point is, given either of those routes, it’s a whole lot more water than what you’re gonna drink directly. You’re gonna drink maybe somewhere between half a gallon and a gallon of water a day. That’s vastly-outweighed by what went into just the patties on my hamburger.

    EDIT2: Oh, it’s definitely just being used directly as drinking water – I didn’t read closely enough. They’re just bottling the water, not even adding soda flavoring.