California is now well into the 4th year (16th year for the Colorado River) of a historic drought. And despite new water reforms, drought shaming, and rampant social media articles ranting about almonds, there remains a lack of ACTIONABLE steps that everyone can take to help reduce our water withdrawals.
So today, I want to propose a new solution to the California drought.
Go backpacking.
I am going to (as factually as possible) break down the HUGE amount of water savings you can achieve by taking one little backpacking trip.
Before we jump into the statistics and figures, I want to preemptively erase one of the biggest arguments that I hear for NOT cutting back on personal water use. According to the most thorough water use statistics (from 2010), public supply water makes up for 16.6% of the total yearly water withdrawals
Thats equates to 181 gallons per person, per day. For domestic, commercial, and industrial purposes.
If each person was able to cut back on 1/4 of their daily total water consumption (across the public water supply board), we would save over 4% of the total yearly water use (575 billion gallons) in California. That's a lot of water.
And for all of you non-California residents, this is on you too. When was the last time you ate almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, raisins, kiwi, olives, peaches (clingstone), pistachios, plums (dried), pomegranates, or walnuts? Those items are produced solely in California (1), and make up just a portion of the 84 major crop and livestock commodities coming to the entire United States from California. Agriculture makes up 60% of the state's water withdrawals. But that's a whole other can of worms which I am not going to get into right now. Today is about how your actions, right now, can create real, measurable changes during this period of severe drought.
Let's go on a theoretical backpacking trip, and compare how much water we would use at home versus in the field (on average).
According to the Institute of Medicine (2), an average man living in a temperate climate needs 3 liters of water per day. An average woman needs 2.2 liters. For the sake of keeping things somewhat straight forward, I am going to average those two numbers and say that a healthy level of water consumption per day at home is 2.6 liters.
While Backpacking
In the field, your water consumption can vary widely. On hot days in the desert, I regularly drink over a gallon of fluids. On more relaxed days in cooler climates, that might be more on par with the at-home numbers. I am going assign our average in the field water consumption at 4 liters. So to start things off, we are using MORE water while backpacking.
Estimate Water Use for Drinking
At Home
While Backpacking
Personal Hygiene
At Home
Assuming you aren't leaving the water running while brushing your teeth or washing your face, that means each person uses an average of 2 liters of water for face washing and teeth brushing (3). For hand washing, let's assume your faucet runs at 1.5 gallons per minute (on the low end), and that it takes 20 seconds total to wash your hands (a few seconds to get them wet, turn the water off, then 15 seconds to wash the soap off). Multiply that by the 15 times on average we wash our hands per day, and you have 4.5 liters of water. So thats a very conservative total of 6.5 liters of water for personal hygiene at home.
While Backpacking
I am going to use my personal knowledge to assign our field numbers on this one. I have a 1-liter water bottle with fluid ounces marked, so I have a good sense of these numbers. I brush my teeth twice a day in the field, and wash my face off once at the end of the day. The total water I use for all three of those tasks is 1 liter. My approach to hand washing is that you only need to use soap and water if you just pooped or if you are preparing to touch food in any way (I use hand sanitizer for the other times). I estimate that I wash my hands about 5 times a day in the field, and use about 4 ounces of water each time, for a total of 1.25 liters of water. Which gives us a total of 2.25 liters of water for personal hygiene in the field.
Estimate Water Use for Personal Hygiene
At Home
While Backpacking
Food Preparation
At Home
At home, my meals generally consist of a cup of tea in the morning, possibly some oatmeal, and the occasional pasta or rice dish in the evening. Most of what I eat is raw, sauteed, or broiled, so there is very little water that goes into my cooking. I'd estimate that I use an average of 2 liters of water for food related things (including washing produce) daily.
While Backpacking
A lot of meals use water for preparation in the field such as oatmeal, pasta, rice, quinoa, etc... From my experience, I would estimate that a typical backpacking menu would need 1.5 liters of water per person per day to prepare.
Estimate Water Use for Food Preparation
At Home
While Backpacking
Dishes
At Home
An efficient dishwasher uses 6 gallons of water per cycle (4). Assuming you run your dishes once per day and have an average household of 3 people, that equals 2 gallons of water per person, per day.
While Backpacking
In the field, it's easy to do a full set that would include a pot, pan, bowl, cup, spoon with only .5 liters of water per person, per day.
Estimate Water Use for Dishes
At Home
While Backpacking
Bathing/Showering
At Home
Most people take a daily shower lasting 5 - 10 minutes and leave the shower on the entire time. A low flow showerhead uses about 8 liters per minute, which gives us an average daily water use of 64 liters (16 gallons) based on an 8 minute shower.
While Backpacking
This is a tricky one to quantify in the field. One approach would be to assume that you are just jumping into a lake or river, in which case your water use would be 0. However, I think a better approach is to look at how much water is used to take a comparable shower in the outdoors. I take a full shower about every 7 days while backpacking. I use a 4-liter dromedary bag that is hung in a tree, and I use the entire thing. So that puts my daily shower water use at just over 1/2 liter per day.
Estimate Water Use for Bathing/Showering
At Home
While Backpacking
Personal Waste Disposal
At Home
My toilet uses 5 liters per flush (which is a comparatively small amount). People go to the bathroom about 6 times per day on average. So that's 30 liters of water.
While Backpacking
In the field we never use water to dispose of waste. It all goes into the ground.
Estimate Water Use for Personal Waste Disposal
At Home
While Backpacking
Laundry
At Home
At home, I'd estimate that one load of laundry, per person, per week is reasonable. One load of laundry takes an average of 40 gallons. So that's 5 1/2 gallons of water per day.
While Backpacking
I follow the same laundry schedule as my full shower schedule, so that's once per week. My laundry in the field consists of 2 shirts, 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of underwear, 1 pair of shorts, and that's about it. I'd say that's about 1/4 of a load of laundry. Which equates to a generous 1 1/2 gallons of water per day.
Estimate Water Use for Laundry
At Home
While Backpacking
Loving this? Sign up and get the latest goods delivered right to your inbox.
Car Washing
At Home
According to a poll by Gas Buddy, most people wash their car on a monthly basis. These car washes take between 30 and 80 gallons of water (5). California's average household size is almost 3 people. So divide 60 gallons of water by 3 people by 30 days in a month, and you get a daily water usage of 2.5 liters.
While Backpacking
There is zero reason to worry about the aesthetics of your car while backpacking, so no water is used.
Estimate Water Use for Car Washing
At Home
While Backpacking
Lawn Care
At Home
It's hard to give an accurate estimate of water used for lawn care because of the wide range of factors. Folks living on the moist north coast obviously use a lot less water than those of us living in the more arid portion of the state. However, statistics I've found (6) state that we average 42% of our water use on lawn care. Up to this point our current daily per person total equals about 35 gallons. This gives us an estimate of 25 gallons of water used daily on lawn care.
While Backpacking
In the field, we have tons of nature to play in and look at. So there is no reason to use any water on lawn care.
Estimate Water Use for Lawn Care
At Home
While Backpacking
A Quick Note
I chose not to include certain statistics, like agriculture water usage, because they would be very rough estimates and not very different between at home and in the field. But do be aware that there are additional ways we are using water than only those listed above.
I also attempted to give a conservative estimate for home water use, and a generous estimate for backpacking water use.
The Totals
So that leaves us with a very conservative estimate of 60 gallons of water used, per person, per day at home. Or 21,900 gallons per person, per year.
In the field, we have a very generous estimate of 4 gallons of water used, per person, per day. Or 1460 gallons per person, per year.
Estimate Total Daily Water Use
At Home
While Backpacking
So backpacking uses only 6% of our at-home water use.
Alright, here's the thing. Your backpacking (or car camping) trip is an opportunity to embrace different habits that you can then translate to your everyday life back home.
Of course I'm not suggesting that you use your backyard as your bathroom, but there are some easy changes to make that can reduce your overall water use dramatically.
Here are my top 5 easy-to-implement suggestions:
Action Steps:
#1 - Stop Watering your Lawn
In most lawns, grass only serves an aesthetic purpose. If you're living in southern California, the reality is that lawn grass is non-native and a huge water suck. I understand that having a tidy and nice looking living space is important, but there are other good options. California is currently offering incentives (up to $2 per square foot) to rip up your lawn and replace it with drought-resistant plants. Most cities currently have watering bans which only allow for lawn watering on 2 days per week, for 15 minutes before 6am or after 9pm. This is already a big reduction, but why not just embrace the fact that you're living in a desert?
#2 - Reduce your Car Washes (and do it by hand)
Washing your car can have some real impacts on it's lifetime longevity, especially if you live in a place where the roads are salted during the winter months. While California does salt their roads, especially in the mountains, there is truly no reason that we would need to wash our cars monthly (except for socially aesthetic reasons). If having a shiny car is important to you, then hire a neighbor kid to wash it using a bucket of water and a sponge. It shouldn't take more than 10 gallons of water for a sponge off and a quick rinse. Total water savings per person per year = 200 gallons.
#3 - Let it Mellow
You know the adage, "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down?" Well with over 50 liters of our daily water usage literally going down the toilet, following this adage can save a lot of water very quickly. I'll admit that there is a bit of a stigma that causes a lot of hesitancy around this approach. It's looked at as a gross thing to do. My two counter-arguments (other than the water savings) are. #1, if it's smelly, go ahead and flush. And if that's the case, you probably need to drink more water. #2, it's still a serious upgrade from using a hole to dispose of your waste (as we do in the backcountry). Even if you only reduce your daily flushes by half, that's still 15 liters of water saved daily, and almost 1400 gallons per year.
#4 - Take a Navy Shower
Turn the water on to get initially wet, then turn it off. Lather up your entire body while the water isn't running. Then turn the water back on and wash the soap and shampoo off. This technique reduces a shower from the 8 minute average detailed above, to about 2 minutes, quartering your water usage. If you shower daily and take a navy shower even 3 of those days, you can easily save 6570 gallons of water per year.
#5 - Be Mindful of Faucets
This is a simple habit to be mindful of and work on changing. Are you leaving the water running while washing your hands? How about while shaving? Or while doing the dishes? Anytime you touch a faucet, think about ways to minimize the water use for that particular activity. This overall mindset change will help you continue to find new ways to save a few ounces of water, multiple times a day. Remember, it all adds up.
So if you can enact each of the five changes I outlined above, then you'll be saving around 12,000 gallons of water a year. Now multiply that by the current 38 million people living in California, and you have a water savings of around 456 billion gallons yearly.
That is some serious water savings.
For more information on ways to reduce your water usage, check out the list of actionable changes at Three Actions Project. It's a great resource for keeping you accountable both in water savings and in living a more sustainable life.
Let's all commit to making a few simple changes now, so that we don't need to make drastic changes in a few years.
