How Much Water Does Humanity Consume?The water that is on earth is a finite resource, and it is the same amount that it has always been here. Rains may bring water, but it is not water from the great beyond, it is water that has been sucked up into the atmosphere somewhere on earth and deposited in your region.

So, I hear you ask, if the amount of water is the same as in the beginning what is all the fuss about us running out of water about then? The answer to that is simple; the amount of water is the same but the amount of humans and animals is thousands of times more than then.

Apart from the fact that the global population is growing, we are also using water for more things, and using far more water than ever before. Add to that climate change, and it becomes more understandable why some regions are experiencing weather anomalies and water shortages.

When we talk about how much water we consume, it is not merely the amount of water that we drink that needs to be taken in to account, but also what is used directly and indirectly – this is known as a water footprint.

A direct water footprint is the amount of water we use directly for drinking, personal hygiene, food preparation, gardening, and recreational purposes. An indirect water footprint consists of any water used in the manufacture of products and services we consume, which includes our clothing, the books we read, the music we listen to, our technology, furniture, and motor vehicles, and the water used for the growing, harvesting, packaging and transportation of food – in other words, basically everything that is either grown or manufactured has a water footprint.

Close to 95% of our indirect water footprint comes from the food we eat – less water is used for growing vegetables than is used to produce beef for consumption, so cutting down on red meat will save billions of litres of water per year. The production of denim jeans and cotton t-shirts uses an exorbitant amount of water to produce, as does technology, and in this “disposable” society of our today these are some of the main reasons for high water consumption.

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