Good Magazine has a recent posting on Water Footprints – how much water an individual and the products they consume use.
Water Footprints are difficult to calculate and the numbers can be argued, however I believe the directional scale is useful.
Click the image for the full picture, and if you want to start conserving water, eat chicken instead of beef, drink tea instead of coffee, and take a shower instead of a bath.
Further Reading
This is another convincing argument for switching to a vegetarian diet! We’ve been hearing a lot lately about how much greenhouse gas emissions are caused by meat production. In fact, “Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said people should aim for one meat-free day a week, before scaling down their consumption even further.” (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3351234/Eat-less-meat-to-combat-climate-change-warns-UN.html)
Now we can add water-conservation to the (long, in my opinion) list of reasons to go vegetarian. Check out the Vegetarian Society for more information: http://www.vegsoc.org/index.html
Wow! The amount of water needed to produce beef is really astounding. Intuitively, I’ve always known that beef required a much, much larger amount of water to produce, but to see it laid out visually is really impressive.