The Other Footprint : The Water Footprint
By now, you’ve all heard of the Carbon Footprint — the measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. Today, KGG sheds light on the other foot; Your Water Footprint.
The Water footprint of an individual is defined as the total water used for the production of the goods and services consumed by the individual. It can be estimated by multiplying all goods and services consumed by their respective virtual-water content.
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The water footprint of a nation shows the total volume of water that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the nation. The water footprint consists of two parts: Use of domestic water resources and use of water outside the borders of the country. The water footprint includes water withdrawn from surface and groundwater and the use of soil water (in agricultural production).
A Few Facts
Ӣ The production of 1 kilogram of beef requires 16,000 liters of water.
Ӣ To produce 1 cup of coffee we need 140 liters of water.
Ӣ The water footprint of China is about 700 cubic meter per year per capita. Only 7% of the Chinese water footprint falls outside China.
Ӣ The USA water footprint is 2500 cubic meter per year per capita.
Coffee Case Study
Background — Coffee is, in dollar terms, the most important agricultural product traded in the world. Producing coffee requires a lot of water.
Objective — A case
study performed by A.Y. Hoekstra and A.K. Chapagain was conducted to
calculate the volumes of water required to drink coffee and tea in the
Netherlands.
Results — “We found that for drinking one standard cup of coffee in the Netherlands we need about 140 litres of water, by far the largest part for growing the coffee plant. A standard cup of coffee is 125 ml, which means that we need more than 1100 drops of water for producing one drop of coffee. Total coffee consumption in the Netherlands requires a total of 2.6 billion cubic metres of water per year, which is equal to 36% of the annual Meuse flow. The Dutch people account for 2.4% of the world coffee consumption. All together, the world population requires about 110 billion cubic metres of water per year in order to be able to drink coffee. This is equivalent to 15 times the annual Meuse runoff, or 1.5 times the annual Rhine runoff.”
What’s Your Water Footprint?
If you’re interested in finding out your individual water footprint, please use the extended calculator provided by WaterFootpring.org