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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
Imitation beef is usually made from stuff like pea protein, not tofu. About 71 g/lb according to the one Google search I just did (https://www.healabel.com/pea-protein-benefits/#10-water-footprint-of-pea-protein-).
None of that is a reason for them being allowed to extract a scarce resource for free.