UK adds to drain on global water sources

Felicity Lawrence
The Guardian,
Wednesday August 20 2008

The Albert Bartlett factory near Glasgow has a prodigious thirst. One in six of all the potatoes, carrots, parnsips and onions eaten in the UK are washed and packed by the company and about six tonnes of tubers move through its Scottish packhouse's 21 giant washing barrels an hour. Here two-thirds of all Sainsbury's potatoes and supplies to most of the other leading supermarkets are cleaned, bagged and dispatched 24/7. To process them requires 85 cubic metres of water a day.
The potato packhouse finds itself on the frontline in the latest environmental battle. Its heavy demand for water is typical of modern processing but by harvesting rainwater from its vast roof and recycling the water from its washing machines through a water treatment plant, it has made itself a paragon of hydrological efficiency and saved itself more than £275,000 on five years of water bills at the same time.
The Scottish packhouse gutters are filled by 114cm (45in) of rainfall a year and there is no local water shortage, but in East Anglia, where Albert Bartlett also operates, water scarcity is already a problem. Companies there have found their expansion curtailed by limits being applied to how much water they can abstract.
Water, or lack of it, has moved rapidly up the agenda for British businesses. A report published today by the environmental group WWF highlights why the issue is suddenly being taken so seriously. UK Water Footprint calculates for the first time how much water British consumers use, not just directly, but also indirectly due to the large volumes required to produce the globally-sourced, all year round foods and textile fibres which we now take for granted. According to WWF, each UK resident uses 4,645 litres of the world's water every day, compared to people in poor countries who subsist on 1,000 litres of "virtual water" a day.
We take 62% of our water needs from other countries, importing most from Brazil, France, Ireland, Ghana, and India thanks to our consumption of meat, soya, oil seed, rice, coffee, tea and cocoa.
But where water comes from, and when, is more important than just the quantity used, the report concludes. Many of the countries from which we import this virtual water have acute water shortages.
Stuart Orr, WWF's water footprint expert and joint author of the report, predicts water will "emerge as a profound issue for our generation in Britain". "Blue" water, withdrawn from ground and surface reserves, is more of an immediate problem than "green" water, from rainfall or the soil, but climate change will mean changing patterns of rainfall too. "There are so many local water crises globally and when that comes together with climate change and population growth, we are setting ourselves up for a real fall. "
The UK sources out-of-season fruits and vegetables from Morocco, but it takes 13 litres of water to grow one tomato in that country. Overpumping of Morocco's aquifers in the main agricultural region has resulted in the water table dropping 20 metres in 35 years. By 2020, at current rates, groundwater will be effectively exhausted. Spain, the 10th largest supplier of our virtual water imports, is already in crisis. Current water use in Almeria is four to five times more than the region's annual rainfall and is mainly drawn , some of it illegally, from deep wells with high salinity.
A shirt made from cotton grown in Pakistan or Uzbekistan requires 2,700 litres of water, which may have come from depleted sources such as the Indus river that often runs dry before it reaches the sea, or from Aral Sea that has lost 80% of its volume in the last 40 years because of excess irrigation.
Jacob Tompkins, of UK charity Waterwise, sees a parallel with biofuels. "People didn't realise what impact they would have on food and food prices. We've had discussions with big retailers about water but because it's not a globally traded commodity I don't think most have grasped the enormity of what is going on in their supply chains and the impact of drought on prices. Will they actually change them? We have to ask: are we exporting drought?"
Footnotes
Virtual water Alternatively called embedded, is water that has been used in the production of food and fibres. Includes resources also for irrigation, processing and packaging of produce.
Water footprint Amount of virtual and visible water used by a country, businesses or individuals.
External water footprint Quantity of virtual water deriving from other countries in imported goods.
Green water That which derives directly from rainfall or from the soil. Generally replenished, but climate change will alter patterns of rainfall and there could be a decline in many parts of the world.
Blue water Withdrawn from ground-water or surface reserves. In many areas blue water is being used faster than nature replenishes it.