Water Needs

Now that the school madness has been over for more than a month, I can finally look back and truly appreciate some of the things that I learned in the past year. For example, in the same class that we were shown these images, we were also introduced to the Water Footprint Network website. This is quite a rich yet simple enough resource for information about water consumption around the world, which is one of the environmental issues that I'm most interested in. So this past week-end I took the time to really search through the site and I found out some interesting facts about the amounts of water needed to produce many of the foods that we consume the most.

Though at times I wished that there was more detailed information - like for example the type of cheese, since I would assume that the different processes for making each cheese requires different amounts of water - I think these numbers are a good starting point to get a general idea about the global water consumption in the production of food.

I did have some preconceived ideas about which item out of two similar ones would require the most water, but a few times I was quite surprised to find out that the reality was the exact opposite of what I had thought.

I realize that the health and price factors will always come before the sustainability one but I think that taking into consideration the latter one as well whenever possible could do a world of good.

• All statistics and pictures via Water Footprint Network •

It is important to take this information with a grain of salt, and not look at the numbers simply as they are, but rather analyze them in relation to each other; for instance, opting for chicken instead of beef more often would help save a lot of water. Not only that, but deciding between the two for dinner will have a far greater impact than deciding between beer or wine. I think that this way, we will be able to slightly tweak and adapt our own consumption habits without having to make any major changes.

More such statistics and details about the numbers I mentioned can be found over here.