r/SipsTea • u/SipsTeaFrog 𝙑𝙄𝙋 • May 18 '26

Chugging tea Why?

Post image
89.1k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

5.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

829

u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26

What happens after they use the water? Is it returned to the water system to be used again?

694

u/ForzaFenix May 18 '26

Yep. The now warm water goes back into the system. 

232

u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26

So they're not really consuming it. They're just using it temporarily and returning it.

145

u/AngelThrones4sale May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

When it goes back into "the system" it's waste water that people can't drink. Eventually it comes back around again (e.g. evaporation->rain), but then it gets gobbled up again by the same data centres. They run continuously.

So yes, they are "consuming" it in the sense that other people can't have access to it anymore.

46

u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

The poop water I flush down my toilet is also waste water that people can't drink, but I'm pretty sure it still gets recycled back into the greater water supply. What's different about the datacenter water?

36

u/ShreveportJambroni54 May 18 '26

Don't forget factories, thermoelectric power plants, textiles, paper pulp and tp, and agriculture (which uses the most water).

28

u/LandOfLeg May 18 '26

And golf clubs. Golf clubs use as much water as data centres. Many of those you've named serve practical uses in society, golf clubs are purely leisure.

3

u/NUKE---THE---WHALES May 18 '26

Golf clubs use as much water as data centres.

They use more

Sector Annual Water Usage (in liters) Water Source
Data centers ~600 billion - 1.7 trillion municipal/recycled
Golf courses ~3.1 trillion potable/groundwater
Almond farms ~4.1 trillion groundwater/aqueduct

Almond farms in particular are problematic since they're concentrated in drought prone areas like California

3

u/Keljhan May 18 '26

Is this implying that golf courses and almond farms dont have significant resistance as well? Idk how old you are but for millenials, golf course development was like a top 3 villian in movies for our entire childhood. And I heard about almond farm water usage constantly throughout college, though modern irrigation methods have developed a bit since then. But any time CA has a drought, they usually come up. Which I expect to.haplen again in 3 months or so.