Beyond water: embedded water

When you’re thinking about water efficiency, it’s important to remember that it’s about more than just the water that comes out of your tap. Water’s crucial to so many more aspects of our lives, so it’s essential that we change our attitudes towards a whole range of day-to-day activities 

Jargon buster

Jargon buster

‘Embedded Water’ is the term for the hidden water that’s used to produce the things we take for granted.

For example, it takes around 2,700 litres of water to produce one cotton t-shirt – that’s enough for one person to drink for 900 days!

What we mean is that it takes 2,700 litres to grow the cotton and physically construct the t-shirt – that’s the ‘Embedded Water’ cost that we rarely think about.

Paper

Paper

It takes 10 litres of water to produce a single sheet of paper. Encourage your staff to only print the minimum and keep the rest on your computer. Could you even go completely paper free?

Travel

Travel

Motivate your staff to be more active on their daily commute. It takes between 13 and 27 litres of water to produce a single litre of petrol, so even car-sharing or public transport will make a huge difference.

Food

Food

It takes 822 litres of water to produce one kilogram of apples, so it’s important to reduce food wastage. Equally eating healthily saves water too, as it takes an astonishing 17,196 litres of water to produce a KG of chocolate; that’s almost 21 times more than apples!

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Check out our business water efficiency tips page for instant inspiration on saving water in your business.

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What can you do?

To learn more about putting togther your own business water efficiency plan, visit our What can you do? pages.

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