Virtual water

[28.08.2013]
Hey you,

Yesterday I watched a channel by choice for the first time, I just have known by hearsay before. That probably sounds a bit hard but the 'Bayerische Rundfunk' [Bavarian channel] has never been one of my favourites. Anyway I recognized a show called 'Faszination Wissen' [Fascination knowledge] about the topic water consumption and because everything about the environment is very interesting for me, I had to watch it.

You can find the documentary here: (Just in German)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrxruEPzD6g&list=PLP4hePAK6Tv5uODOlcl5MnLah2AmdH5J

For all who have no time to watch, here's a short summit.

The documentary is about the basically questions about the water consumption but it doesn't only show usual tips for water saving but also more thoughts to this theme. Who of you has already thought about the virtual water consumption? Virtual water is the water that's in all our daily products. In the new cotton shirt that has to 'grow' at first and which will be processed and maybe dyed or in the meat on our plate which drinks water as a -hopefully happy- animal, that eats feed that has to grow and it probably buggers some barns that have to be cleaned. It’s really alarming to hear that one kilogram of beef uses 15400l of water. Although I’m vegetarian this number shocked me.  

Beside all the facts the movie talked about the ‚Water Footprint‘ a kind of table that shows in three colours the water consumption of a product. In the future I’ll surely compare some products and decide the better one. Who wants to compare on his own, here’s the link:

http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/productgallery

The green drops show the rainwater, the blue ones the water that has to be added, like for watering and the gray drops symbolise the amount of water that has been polluted because of dung or dyestuff for example.

I don’t know if such a table can help enduringly but I hope some people will think about this topic. Every one of us can just do a little bit but already Sarah Connor sings in Stand up ‚You know that everything was nothing at the start‘.

_Marie_ 

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