Water, Water, Everywhere by John Willoughby

With a large part of the Earth covered in water you'd think that water was not something that we need to be worried about. Nothing could be further from the truth. We may be awash in water, but drinking water? That's a whole other story.

Another problem with water is where it is. Yes, there is still drinkable water in the world, but not always were we need it. Moving water around uses up more energy, and often we are moving so much of it that we are causing problems for the places we get it from.

So what does this all mean to you and I? We are part of the problem, and we are part of the solution. Wasting water may or may not be a big problem depending on where we are getting it from. If we are using water from a nearby lake and the waste runs off into a septic system it more or less gets filtered through the earth and returns to the same water source (sort of). Not great, but not horrible. Now, if we only drink half the bottle of water shipped from Fiji well, not only is that not going back to the source but quite a bit of energy was used to get that water to you. So drink up. Every drop.

If you are in Las Vegas, then leaving a faucet running has a real cost to it. Quite a bit of effort was used to get that water to you. Water is being diverted from other sources, aquifers are being drained, and the fragile desert ecology is being destroyed just so you can go golfing in the middle of the sand. So at least pay attention, and turn off faucet when you are not using it.

And perhaps worse than using up scarce water sources is polluting existing water sources. Industrial processes put out a lot of nasty chemicals. Ones that are not particularly good to drink. And ones that you might say, Well, it's a big ocean and I'm only putting in a little bit of goo , but that goo adds up and before you know it - contaminated water! And this is where a little thought is needed. No, you as an individual are probably not directly dumping toxic goo into the rivers or lakes. But are you making purchasing choices that require businesses to create more goo? Making ecologically friendly choices for things like bottles, cans, boxes, etc. will have an impact on the companies that produce those items and help them to create less goo. And recycling will have a big impact.

Creating glass bottles, plastic tubs, tin cans and sheets of crisp paper all require industrial processes. Using recycled material to start with means short-circuiting part of the manufacturing process and that means using less resources. Paper, in particular, has a direct impact on water. Creating paper is a very water-intensive process. Creating paper from recycled paper instead of wood pulp uses quite a bit less water . So by recycling your paper, you are actually saving water.

In addition to recycling your own paper, make sure that the people you do business with are recycling your paper. Make sure they are taking the ecology seriously, just like you should be. At Iron Mountain, for example, we shred paper. The most important part of what we do is protecting our client's information, but we also care about the environment. Once the paper has been shredded, we make sure it is recycled which helps the ecology in a number of ways. One big way is the water that is saved through recycling. Last year, Iron Mountain saved billions of gallons of water by recycling the paper that we shredded. That's right - I said Billions. And that leaves more water for little things like drinking. Protecting your information while protecting the environment - now there is a win-win situation!

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2013/service-lines/secure-shredding/wate...
	See more stories from ironmountain

Most recent headlines