Even though water covers nearly three-quarters of this blue dot of ours, most of that is salt water. We need freshwater to fuel the world. And freshwater is not as limitless as it seems, so wasting is it a no no. Here’s how much water we use to make, well, the things we use.
The water footprint of products comes from Imagine All the Water, a site created by the European Commission:
- Beef – 15,415 litres of water
- Hamburger – 2,393 litres of water
- Pizza – 1,216 litres of water
- Jeans – 9,982 litres of water
- Shoes – 8,547 litres of water
- T-Shirt – 2,495 litres of water
- Rice – 2,497 litres of water
- Chocolate – 1,720 litres of water
- Beer – 170 litres of water per pint
- Cheese – 152 litres of water
- Coffee – 132 litres of water per cup
- Apple – 82 litres of water
- Loaf of Bread – 48 litres of water
- Paper – 13 litres of water per sheet
What do those numbers mean? Well, making a T-shirt is the equivalent of flushing a toilet 250 times. Making a pair of jeans? That’s hosing your lawn for nine hours straight. Even something as small as a loaf of bread requires crying non-stop for 84 days straight. If you think about it, the numbers make sense. For something like an apple, there’s only so many steps of water it needs to grow. For something like a burger? Raising cattle requires water, using wheat for the bun needs water, vegetables need water and so on, it’s a multi-step process that requires water at nearly every step.
Check out the Imagine All the Water website to see your water footprint and what you can do about it. [Imagine All the Water]
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