With World Water day taking place today and the focus of this year’s campaign on the link between water and energy, Deirdre Kelly considers at the amount of water it takes to bring us some of our day-to-day products.

Why water?

As an essential and increasingly precious resource, water has been described as the oil of the 21st century. Globally 768 million people still lack access to improved water sources, and this figure is set to increase in the coming years.

Often when we’re trying to cut down the amount of water we use we think of ideas like not leaving the tap running while brushing our teeth (which saves up to 9 litres of water per minute or 26,000 litres per family per year). While these acts certainly help, some of the biggest water saving changes we could make come from our indirect use of water.

The Water Footprint of a product refers to the amount of water consumed and polluted along the different stages of its production.

Water footprint

  • One cup of coffee uses 132 litres of water to grow, produce, package and ship the beans.  (versus 27 litres of water for a cup of tea.)
  • To produce a 100g chocolate bar uses 1,700 litres of water.
  • Growing enough cotton for one t-shirt uses 2,495 litres of water.

Whose water?  

Of course we need water to make almost everything, however with global water use increasing at more than twice the rate of population growth, now is the time to re-think our consumption of water-intensive products.

In Ireland, over 70% of our water footprint comes from outside the country. This means the water sacrificed to make most of our products comes from commodity-producing countries, usually in the Global South. This decreases the amount of water available to the people in those countries, where water scarcity is often a problem.

While cotton itself isn’t necessarily a luxury item, our ‘fast fashion’ throwaway use of it can be considered indulgent. We dispose of 225,000 tonnes of textile waste in Ireland each year. Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan, intensive water use for cotton farming has reduced the volume of the Aral Sea (the world’s 4th largest lake) by 80% in 40 years, as well as damaging the quality of the water for local people.

Supporting livelihoods

This system clearly isn’t working for the environment, but it’s not working for producers either. For a jar of coffee that costs €2.50 here, the producer in the Global South earns just 17 cents. The picture is similar for producers of other commodities too.

Would it be possible for us to reduce our consumption of water-intensive products and pay a little more for them instead? This way we could sustainably support the livelihoods of cotton, coffee and chocolate producers by providing them with a better income, while also causing less environmental damage.

Find out more about the amount of water behind other products and calculate your own water footprint at the Water Footprint Network.

Learn about the stories behind our products at storyofstuff.com

World Water Day takes place on 22nd March. Find out more at unwater.org/worldwaterday

Author: Deirdre Kelly

Image credit: Silent Killer, a woman carries water in Pune, India past sugercane fields, which use huge amounts of water and fertilizer, a hazard to health. Daniel Bachhuber (Creative commons license)

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