The Virtual Water Project

Posted by andyh on 2nd April
Tagged with: footprint kekeritz poster timm virtual water
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This month's Green Thing is all about taking Short Sharp Showers. There are CO2 savings involved because of the energy used to heat up the H2O, but the overall principle is one of water conservation.

Over one billion people in the world can’t get clean water and twenty per cent of those are children. Disease from dirty water causes death or illness in four out of five infants in the developing world.

But if you think water shortages aren’t a problem in the West, think again. Apart from Belgium and Cyprus, the UK has less water available per person than any other EU country and our capital city is even drier than Istanbul. Meanwhile, the average American uses 80-100 gallons of water a day, 8 times what a family of four in Africa might use, and over 100% more than we needed 25 years ago

As we explain on the "Why?" page, there's really much less water around than we might think - at least the fresh, drinkable kind. And scientists predict we’ll need every drop with coming heatwaves, droughts and population growth. So we may as well start saving it now.

And saving water in terms of showers, taps and pipes is on thing, but we don't tend to think about the amount of water that goes into making the products in our daily lives. The image above is from a lovely piece of information design by Timm Kekeritz. His double-sided Virtual Water Project poster illustrates how much water countries use and also everyday products, including food.

He says it's designed "to show how much freshwater is used to produce selected products - hoping for people to rethink their consumption patterns." Well worth a look.