The 1st of October is the Portuguese National Water Day, so it’s the one day in the year when we can really talk about sustainable use of water in the media (the rest of the year water will only be featured in the media if there is a water associated calamity or another rise in the prices for consumers).

So let’s use this day to remind everyone that sustainable agriculture and smart food choices are the best tool we have to preserve the worlds water resources.

On average each person consumes 3.800 litres of water per day. By now you are thinking that I am crazy and that none of us drinks a small swimming pool or showers 50 times every day, but please bear with me for just a little while longer. 

We “eat” a lot of water. As a matter of fact, on average, each of us eats 3.496 litres of water every day. Eating water sounds really strange, but it is true, you eat loads of it, you are addicted to it, and you don’t even know it.

We use water directly in our daily lives (we drink it, we cook with it, we wash with it, we clean with it, etc.). In these shores we use we consume 137 litres of water every day. This part is easily visible and is directly managed by each one of us, but it is only a small bit of what we use in total. All the rest of our water consumption is invisible, it is made by others in our behalf. For instance, the production processes of the industrial products that we consume every day, (such as paper, plastic or clothes) amount to the use of 167 litres of water per day.

However the biggest contribution to our water use is associated with the production of the food we consume. This amounts to 3.496 litres per day which means that 92% of the water we use is invisible and it is hidden in our food!

This is best explained with an example:

Let’s consider a steak… A nice big juicy half kilo sirloin steak. The animal the beef comes from takes 3 years to raise and will produce around 200 Kg of boneless beef. During this 3 years the animal drank 24.000 litres of water and a further 7.000 litres was used in servicing the farmhouse where it was raised. To this you must add the 3.000.000 litres of water that were used to produce the 8.500 Kg of roughages and grains that were fed to the animal. If you add this numbers you will arrive to the shocking conclusion that within the nice pound steak in front of you, 7.700 litres of water are hidden.

That’s right the steak can also be seen as a water container for all the water used in its production, and the same goes for every food item you consume.

You can see this presented in a very clear way in this Virtual Water presentation. or in this video by the author Angela Morelli.

Now for some good news, if you are part of the problem then you are also part of the solution. Next time you go shopping, remember that your shopping cart is the perfect weapon to fight against our gigantic water footprint. Follow this three ideas and you will start reducing the invisible part of your water consumption while still being able to shower daily:

1 – Meat is terrible water consuming product, so have one meat-free day a week (this will save 10.000 litres per month per person).

2 – Prefer free range, grass fed animals as your meat source.

3 – Don’t waste food. In developed countries we throw away around 30% of all the food we buy. Remember you are not only throwing way money you are also throwing way water.