Water Footprint – Other Food Products

Bottled water is often vilified as wasting water. However, other beverages are far bigger users of water.

On average, one apple (weighing 150g) takes 125 litres of water to produce. Taking it a step further to apple juice, and one 200ml glass requires around 230 litres of water.

It takes 168 litres of water to produce one pint of beer. And around 18,900 litres of water are needed to produce 1kg of coffee beans. To put that into perspective, a standard cup of coffee (125ml) has a water footprint of 130 litres.

Somewhere around 30 litres of water are required for tea leaves, 10 litres for a small dash of milk and a further 6 litres for each teaspoon of sugar. This means that a simple cup of tea with milk and two sugars could actually require 52 litres of water – enough to fill my kettle more than 30 times.

The best global estimate of the total water needed (green + blue + grey) to produce a litre of milk is about 1020 litres. Total agricultural water use accounts for about 70% of total water withdrawals globally.

It takes 960 litres of water to make a single litre of wine. Or 720 litres of water for a 750 ml bottle. It takes almost three litres of water to make one litre of carbonated and sweetened colddrink. And, Almond milk requires 384 litres of water per litre. Makes you think, doesn’t it?