Conserving water is not just about our budgets – the life we share with the plants, animals, and people in our neighborhoods and beyond depend on water.
Your individual or household water footprint includes both the water directly from the tap, as well as the water used in the making of things you use – and eat. In fact, food is often one of the biggest contributors to a water footprint.
To find your water footprint, check out the extended calculator from watercalculator.org or answer a few questions on a shorter version.
What’s included in the water footprint?
Questions in a comprehensive water footprint often focus on indoor and outdoor water use, such as from doing dishes, laundry, and watering plants. You can “earn” points from doing things like watering your garden from a rain barrel supply or recycling.
Indirect sources of water use come from a variety of products and sources including driving habits, electricicty, diet and shopping habits.
Making just a few small changes can significantly reduce your water footprint. Diet and clothing changings are easy to implement have a big impact. For example, cutting out 200 grammes of beef (a little less than half a pound) is the equivalent to saving water from 47 eight-minute showers.1 A single pair of jeans takes 7,500 liters of water to make, the same amount used by the average American at home over the course of 24 days2.
If food is a major contributor to your water footprint, check out the interactive product selection tool from Waterfootprint.org to see how you can swap out foods that have a large water footprint impact. Waterfootprint.org also goes in depth to document the sources of water foods use.
We can all contribute in our customized way to conserving water globally while also keeping our local drinking water sources clean and well stocked. Your community and our earth depend on it!
1 – https://www.waterfootprint.org/time-for-action/what-can-consumers-do/#productwater-footprint-crop-and-animal-products
2 – https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1035161, https://www.epa.gov/watersense/statistics-and-facts
