WATER
ESSENTIAL, HOLY
AND
ARKABLE
Water for life
Boiling point
Water and brewing
NOVEMBER 200S
Text: Jules Marshall
Image: Getty Images
H2O, chemically inert, tasteless, odourless and colourless, neither acid nor
alkali, water is the only substance that exists as a gas, a liquid and a solid at
normal earth temperatures. Its solid form is less dense than its liquid,
meaning ice floats, and freezes from the top down, allowing life to exist in
the coldest lakes and seas. Changing in form from vapour to ice,
precipitation to evaporation, water flows from one form to another in the
water cycle. Pounding waves, glaciers gouging landscapes, rivers and
streams creating landscapes, erosion forming valleys and rich deltas, water
carries trade, supports human development, binds population centres and
is critical to life as we know it.
Water washes away impurities and pollutants, is considered a purifier in
most religions, and is a primary building block for life. It carries nutrients to
plants and is essential to agriculture and mankind in general. Water has the
power to destroy as well as to create. Witness how insignificant humans
were rendered by the recent Tsunami, floods and hurricanes. Or how
helpless and parched through drought and desiccated deserts. Water
dramatically impacts our history and future.
Sure, we know that water is essential for life but sometimes we have to
remind ourselves that water is life, it's two thirds of our body, and it's the
elixir in which the earth evolves. A full 72% of the human body is water and
each of us needs between one and seven litres a day to remain healthy, the
precise amount depending on the level of activity, temperature, humidity,
and other factors. The water we consume needs to be salt and pollution
free, and not inhabited by pathogenic microbes. Our senses evaluate how
drinkable water is. We dislike salty or stagnant water and favour the purer
water of a mountain spring or aquifer. Water is also a very good solvent: it
dissolves many types of substances, such as various salts and sugar, and
facilitates their chemical interaction, which aids complex metabolisms.
Water has an unusually high specific heat, which plays many roles in
regulating global climate, specifically as an absorber of infrared radiation,
crucial in the greenhouse effect (without which the average surface area of
the planet would be 18° Celsius).
Water though is under threat, almost loved to death. Ocean water makes
up 97% of Planet Earth's water supply, 2 is frozen, and we get our water
from the 1% that remains, from groundwater (wells) or surface water
(rivers, lakes and streams). For most of us, water is taken for granted,
gushing from the tap. We cook, clean, bathe, wash, and waste this
remarkable resource.
In recent centuries water has increasingly been mistreated as a mere
commodity and defiled as a dumping ground. It has become apparent that
water is fast becoming a precious resource, worthy of better treatment and
conservation. A combination of population growth and carelessness has
resulted in a shrinking availability of drinking water.
While we use water for pleasure, swimming, sailing or surfing, others
perish for want of it. Some 6,000 children die everyday from diseases
associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation
and poor hygiene.
UNESCO's World Water Development Report (2003) indicates that in the
next twenty years, the quantity of available fresh water will decrease by
30%. Currently 40% of the world's inhabitants have insufficient fresh water
for minimal hygiene. Over 2.2 million people died in 2000 from diseases
related to the consumption of contaminated water or drought.
On average an African woman walks six kilometres to collect water,
carrying twenty kilos on her head which is the weight of your airport
luggage. In developing countries a person uses about ten litres of water a
day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses 135 litres every day.
As an integral part of society, Heineken strives to make a positive
contribution to all who come into contact with the company—employees,
consumers and all other stakeholders, including the environment—and to
minimise any negative effects of its operations.
To this end there are continuous efforts to use energy, water and other
raw materials as efficiently possible. In terms of volume, water is the main
raw material used in brewing and soft drink production. It is also used as a
PAGE 27
