Most people do not think about water usage when they don a pair of jeans, climb into their car or eat a slice of bread; I mean, what has water got to do with making my blue jeans? As it turns out, a lot!
Humans are a global consumer society, and this is unfortunately not good for our planet at all – we are in actual destroying our natural resources daily by our “use-and-ross†habits.
Global water consumption has increased eight times in the past one hundred years, as we neglect nature and natural resources, and destroy the future of following generations.
Unfortunately, we generally only think about water usage in terms of drinking water, water utilised for personal hygiene, food preparation and agriculture, but water is used for much more besides, including in the manufacture of just about every single thing we use, eat, or drink:
- One piece of A4-paper takes 10 litres of water to manufacture;
- It takes an immense amount of water to produce alcoholic drinks and other beverages:
- It takes 75 litres of water to manufacture just one glass of beer;
- A glass of wine is use about 120 litres;
- It takes 140 litres for cup of coffee; and
- Growing a single orange uses about 50 litres of water – 1 litre of orange juice requires 1200 litres of water.
- Production of a loaf of bread takes 567 litres of water.
- Growing a 1 kg of potatoes uses 500 litres water and producing 1 kg rice takes 1900 litres of water.
- Growing a chicken takes 1500 litres of water and the production of 1 kg chicken meat uses 3500 litres water. The production of an egg uses 500 litres water.
- A dairy cow must drink 15 litres water to produce one gallon (3.78 litres) of milk. 10 000 litres of water are used for beef production.
- It takes around 6 800 litres of water to grow enough cotton to produce just one pair of blue jeans. Production of a pair of jeans uses 8 000 litres of water.
- Approximately 95 litres of water is used to manufacture a plastic bottle and about 40 litres for aluminium can.
- Your car requires 148 000 litres of water to manufacture; it is unclear whether that figure includes the more 7 600 litres used to make its tyres.
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