Know Your Water Footprint.
6 January 2012
While I was browsing my favorite website (other then the Minnesota Energy Challenge of course) – National Geographic environment – I found a couple great interactive features that help you learn about how much water you are using. They helped me realize where I can save water other than the obvious shorter showers.
- Hidden Water Use - Who knew that 1 pound of cheese requires 600 gallons of water?! I sure didn’t. This feature shows how much water other common foods and products use.
- Water Footprint Calculator - The average individual in America uses 2,000 gallons a day. How do you measure up to the average use? This will also help you see what category you can to improve on the most; home, diet, stuff or energy.
- Water Wiz Game-A great interactive game for all those junior environmental smarties.
Of course, there are some good non-internet resources as well. This water footprint pocket guide is from the University of Minnesota: keep it in your wallet to remind you to think twice before you buy that latte that took 53 gallons of water to make.
One Comment
leave one →
I’ve been keeping track of water use in my home (that didn’t count lattes, other than the ones I made, and then only part of it)
and have been able to make some fairly serious reductions; I blogged about it a bit here:
http://sandeen.net/wordpress/energy/eternal-vigilance-is-the-price-of-efficiency-part-2-water/
But it frustrates me that the St. Paul water folks (SPRWS) put in fancy new digital meters which record up to 3 months of usage history, and all the consumer gets is a quarterly number, in huge units (100 square feet, or about 700 gallons). Seems like a perfect opportunity to supply more data to the consumer so they can make better choices…