Water Use Doesn’t Always Conform to Conventional Logic

According to Quartz:

The word “organic” is a powerful marketing tool. In clothing—just as in food—brands love to tout their use of organic agricultural products to show they’re doing their part to fight the industry’s outsized environmental footprint. They know consumers want products they believe are better for them and the planet. “Organic,” which generally means something was grown without synthetic additives or pesticides and wasn’t genetically modified, seems to promise as much.

But the reality isn’t always so simple. Your organic cotton t-shirt may have actually used up more resources to produce than one made of conventionally grown cotton, and could have a greater overall impact on the environment.

One major reason, as various speakers pointed out at a May 23 panel held by Cotton Inc., a research group that serves the cotton industry, is that conventional cotton varieties have a higher yield, meaning a single plant will produce more fiber than its organic counterpart. That’s because conventional cotton has been genetically engineered for that purpose. In the past 35 years, cotton yields have risen 42%, largely due to biotechnology and better irrigation techniques.

Organic cotton, by definition, comes from plants that have not been genetically modified. Because of that difference, to get the same amount of fiber from an organic crop and a conventional crop, you’ll have to plant more organic plants, which means using more land. That land, of course, has to be tended and irrigated.

It will take you about 290 gallons of water to grow enough conventional, high-yield cotton to produce a t-shirt, according to Cotton Inc. To grow the same amount of organic cotton for a t-shirt, however, requires about 660 gallons of water. The disparity is similar for a pair of jeans.

Water required to grow organic cotton to make a pair of jeans is 2641 gallons as compared with 1135 gallons for conventional jeans.

More information from Quartz.

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Understanding of Watersheds

by Emily McBroom

“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.” –Leonard da Vinci.

Leonard da Vinci’s comparison of blood flowing through human arteries to the movement of water upon the Earth demonstrates his understanding of watersheds. In fact, da Vinci, along with Nicollo Machiavelli, used this knowledge of river systems to attempt a diversion of the River Arno from Pisa to Florence in the early 1500s as a military strategy. But that is another story for another time.

Da Vinci recognized that water flowed over and under the surface of the Earth in a connected, veinous pattern akin to the human anatomy. Water flows across and under an area of land to enter rivers, streams, and other water bodies to arrive at a common point. This is the description of a watershed.

Watersheds come in different shapes and sizes due to topography, geology, climate, and amount of development. For example, the Continental Divide in the United States determines which direction water will flow toward its most outward point. On the west side of the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River flows toward the Pacific Ocean. On the eastern side, surface water flows toward the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. Similar to da Vinci’s connection of the human body to water flows, our own understanding of watersheds tells us much about local water sources and quality.

Another way to think of a watershed is as a big bowl separated from other watersheds by ridges or elevation directing water runoff in a certain direction. Our water supply is located in one or more of those watershed bowls. The quality of the water we receive from either wells or utility companies is determined by the runoff of water within our watershed.

There are 78 major watersheds in the lower 48 states of the US of which the Mississippi drainage basin is the largest. It is also the third largest in the world after the Amazon in South America and the Congo in Africa. On a local scale, however, there are many smaller watersheds contained within the major ones.

Why do we care about watersheds?

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) provides an interactive map for locating your watershed.