Is blue the new green?

by Sparklin Gesine
June 6, 2011http://businessnerds.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/is-blue-the-new-green/

Our planet is called the blue planet
because its surface is covered with water by 70 %.

The human body consists by 72 % of water.

Without water we can’t live.

Water is used for energy, food and transport
so whoever controls water controls the world.

Nature however is the true master
and very now and then we are reminded
by her power when a little snow
stops our technological society
from functioning
or a Tsunami devastates a whole country.

Reason enough
to look at water consumption
in the context of eco friendliness,
both, on private and professional level.

When we talk about water
we have to distinguish between
real and virtual water consumption.

The virtual-water content of a product
is the volume of freshwater
used to produce the product,
measured at the place
where the product was actually produced
(production-site definition)
or the volume of water
that would have been required
to produce the product
at the place where the product is consumed
(consumption-site definition).

The real-water content of products
is generally negligible if compared
to the virtual-water content.

German national water footprint

In the past years,
the water use in German households as well
as in the industrial sector has declined constantly.

This trend is very welcome
and has to be encouraged in the future.

But this amount of water
only represents a small portion
of the total water
the Germans consume on a daily basis.

The total water footprint of German consumers
is 159.5 cubic kilometres of water per year.

With a population of currently 82.2 million,
each citizen consumes 5,288 litres of water each day,
and only a small portion of it for drinking,
cooking or other household activities.

The biggest amount of this water
is hidden in the food or products
that are consumed each day.

About half of the German
agricultural water footprint
is made up by imported products or food.

That means that by importing those goods,
water in virtual form was also imported
from the producing countries.

Germany has thereby left
its water footprint in those countries.

The imported goods
with the highest water footprint
are – in descending order –
coffee, cocoa, oilseeds, cotton, pork,
soybeans, beef, milk, nuts and sunflowers.

The biggest water footprint of Germany
is left in Brazil, Ivory Coast, France,
the Netherlands, the USA, Indonesia,
in Ghana, India, Turkey and Denmark
respectively, also in descending order.

If you want to know more
about the water footprint of nations,
check out this report:http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Hoekstra_and_Chapagain_2007.pdf
and this website:http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/NationalWaterFootprint
Blue living

Private persons
can reduce their water footprint
by changing diet and lifestyle.

Using less water in direct consumption,
consuming less (or preferably no) meat,
wearing clothes made by organic cotton…

You heard all this
in one of my previous blog posts
and you’ll realize that consuming
less “blue” means being more “green”.

In order to get a feeling
for the amounts of
(direct and indirect) water consumption
throughout your daily life
and because a picture often says
more than a thousand words,
have a look at this infographichttp://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/trans0309walkthisway.html

If you would like to see more examples
for the amount of water consumed
in the production of everyday food products,
you have to see the poster
by the German designer Timm Kekeritz.

It was created in 2007 in Berlin.

For all i-Phone users:
you can even get an app
based on the data used for this poster.

(For more information on the poster
and the app, check out http://virtualwater.eu/ )