Ah—the Academy Awards! Oscar night! An evening with the stars! Every February, Hollywood turns out while America tunes in for a few hours of glamour, excitement, and temporary escape.. It’s a time when people come together to celebrate art and talent, to have fun cheering on their favorite films and performers, and to, in some instances, be part of history. While most people are focused on which actor or actress excelled in their role, at American Water, we always give the Oscar nod to water, an actor who plays a starring and essential role in every Oscar night tradition.
In celebration of our all-time Oscar winner, we offer a look at a few of the categories that water sweeps every year—and why!
Best actor is a sparkling role. You won’t see an empty seat in the 3,300-seat capacity Dolby Theatre, the site of the 91st Academy Awards. Assuming each of those 3,300 Oscar attendees drinks two glasses of champagne, the water consumed in producing that champagne comes to 209,220 gallons. And that doesn’t take into account the water needed to wash all those champagne flutes!
Best home-viewing supporter. 33 million people tune in to watch the Oscars. Let’s say during these viewing parties, a 2-liter bottle of soda is consumed per every 4 viewers. 9,900,000 of gallons of water are used to make the soda alone. Another 25 gallons of water is used to produce the plastic bottle that contains that soda—that’s 206,250,000 gallons of water for all the Oscar-night party soda bottles around the country.
Cleanest dialogue: It wouldn’t be Oscar night without the iconic red carpet—which, at 900’ wide x 33’ wide covers a square area of 29,700 feet. If it takes three hours to clean the red carpet (three times the time required for a carpet covering an average-sized room), the water required comes to over 270 gallons, excluding the water-energy nexus consumed in running the cleaning machines.
Lifetime importance. Throughout the lifetime of the Oscars, dating from 1928, there have been 10 Best Picture winners we consider having water or water-related items in their titles. Those include everything from last year’s The Shape of Water to Titanic (1998) to Rain Man (1989) to the earliest water-related film title, 1936’s Mutiny on the Bounty.
So, this Oscar night, sit back, pour yourself a nice tall glass of tap water and celebrate the role water plays in bringing you the very best of Hollywood!
