Calculating Your Water Footprint on PNN

Calculating Your Water Footprint

Posted by goinggreen Posted on: 08/26/08

Calculating Your Water Footprint

If you're not familiar with those nifty little online tools to calculate your carbon footprint, check out the Environmental Impact Calculator at Low Impact Living. It's one of the best out there because it recommends projects for reducing your impact based on your specific inputs and a checklist that changes the total once you complete projects so that you can see your progress.

With so much of the world experiencing drought and water scarcity, there is a new tool put out by Waterfootprint.org to calculate just that, your water footprint. I calculated mine and I am at about 300 cubic meters a year, mostly because of eating a plant based diet and being conscious of conserving water.

Here are a few facts about water use to mull over:

- The production of one kilogram of beef requires 16 thousand litres of water.

- To produce one cup of coffee we need 140 litres of water.

- The water footprint of China is about 700 cubic meter per year per capita. Only about 7% of the Chinese water footprint falls outside China.

- Japan with a footprint of 1150 cubic meter per year per capita, has about 65% of its total water footprint outside the borders of the country.

- The USA water footprint is 2500 cubic meter per year per capita.

Things you can do right now to reduce your water usage:

- Turn off the water while brusing your teeth

- Cut down on coffee and meat consumption

- Soap up the dishes with the water turned off, then rinse all at once

- Reduce the length of your showers

- Put in drought resistant plants so you can water less.