How much water am I really worth?

I was sitting in a nice little coffee shop yesterday drinking my decaf. I was reminded of the "water footprint" and thought how much water was used/wasted in making this little luxury item - from seed in the ground to my afternoon cuppa.

It turns out 140 litres of water is required to cultivate the beans, water the bean plants, process and brew a cup of coffee. So multiplied by the number of coffees per week, month, year and you get a lot of water for a little bit of brown caffeine infusion.

There is an excellent website by the Water Footprint Network . You’ll find in graphic form how much water it takes to produce common items – such as meat and coffee – that we take for granted. There is also a Water Footprint Calculator that you can tinker around with by imputing various aspects of your consumption habits to get an estimate. I played a bit with the calculator and found – a bit to my surprise – that a great bulk of my water consumption came from meat even though I thought I had a relatively low-meat and balanced diet. Globally, the world uses 200m litres of water each second to grow its food. When you think about it, the numbers seem astounding.

I am not one for guilt complexes or extreme deprivations. It’s nice to have the little luxuries and treats but it’s really worth thinking and reminding ourselves that there is a water cost to everything and this water doesn’t come out of thin air.