What's worse: more garbage or water consumption?

Question

What's worse: more garbage or water consumption?

Answer 1

we can't live without water but could certainly use less of it:  no lawns nor golf courses, don't flush the toilet every time, very short showers, etc.  garbage could be most significantly by not buying processed products that are packaging intensive and buying enough food to eat without throwing out waste.

Answer 2

This is a tough one because the two don't compare easily. But I'll give it a shot.

Think of it this way: Garbage can hurt water, but water can't hurt garbage.

Your community likely has some kind of recycling service that will allow you to responsibly dispose of waste. And as packaging and re-use technologies mature, garbage will become less of a problem. I predict that in the near future companies will spring up to "mine" waste disposal sites for resources (they already draw methane from such sites to use for energy production), so even decades-old garbage will be recovered and recycled.

Fresh water, on the other hand, is becoming more scarce. It is threatened not only by surface pollution (being poured into rivers, oceans, etc.) but subsurface contamination from landfills and waste injection. Also, changing weather patterns are drying up formerly reliable sources of fresh water.

Water can be cleaned up for human consumption through desalination, but this is an expensive, energy-intensive process ... and it does nothing for the environment.

So my advice would be to concentrate on wasting less water and let the garbage problem take care of itself. Do what you can to recycle, of course, but do more to preserve our dwindling water supply.

Answer 3

I think garbage is worse, you can't ever get rid of it!! But water... you can recycle that and clean it!!