Save water

Hello,

People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business.


Some facts and figures about water use

* The production of one kilogram of beef requires 16 thousand litres of water.
* To produce one cup of coffee we need 140 litres of water.
* The water footprint of China is about 700 cubic meter per year per capita. Only about 7% of the Chinese water footprint falls outside China.
* Japan with a footprint of 1150 cubic meter per year per capita, has about 65% of its total water footprint outside the borders of the country.
* The USA water footprint is 2500 cubic meter per year per capita.
* The Indian water footprint ist 980 cubic meter per year per capita, with just 2 % of its total water footprint outside the borders of the country.
1. One option is to substitute a consumer product that has a large water footprint by a different type of product that has a smaller water footprint. Examples:
2. - eat less meat or become vegetarian,
- drink tea instead of coffee, or even better drink plain water.
Not wearing cotton but artificial fibre clothes saves a lot of water. But this approach has limitations, because many people don't easily shift from meat to vegetarian and people like their coffee and cotton.

3. A second option is to stick to the same consumption pattern but to select the cotton, beef or coffee that has a relatively low water footprint or that has its footprint in an area that doesn’t have high water scarcity. This requires, however, that consumers have proper information to make that choice. Since this information is generally not available in the world of today, an important thing consumers can do now is ask product transparency from businesses and regulation from governments. When information is available on the impacts of a certain article on the water system, consumers can make conscious choices about what they buy.


Bye