Minimize Your Water Footprint with GOOD Magazine's Latest Transparency

This transparency produced by Good Magazine shows how much water daily tasks use and some simple alternatives that might help you save some water. Some of these ideas are good, but I just can't do without my morning cup of coffee. A link to the entire 1900 px × 1300 px image is after the jump.

A collaboration between GOOD Magazine and Fogelson-Lubliner, their latest Transparency gives you some examples of how much water is used in some of your daily activities.

For example, a pound of chicken takes 287 gallons of water to produce while a baked potato takes a mere 7 gallons.

Some of the winners?

Oranges over Apples (13 vs. 18 gallons )
Beer over Wine (20 vs. 31 gallons per glass )

~~Dishwasher vs. Dish washing by Hand (20 vs. 4 gallons )~~

Energy Star Dishwasher over dish washing by hand (4 gallons vs. 20 gallons )
Solar Energy over Nuclear (24.5 vs. 255 gallons per day )

GOOD's Sources: Department of Energy; H2OConserve; IEEE Spectrum; The Water Footprint Network

View the original here.

Comments (4)

I believe you have the numbers transposed above for dishwasher vs. handwashing.

posted by JudiAU on March 20th 2009 at 4:06pm
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JudiAU is totally correct.

Dishwashing by hand = 20 gallons

Dishwashing w/ Energy Star dishwasher = 4 gallons

posted by accidentalvermonter on March 21st 2009 at 4:38pm
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Phew! I was feeling horrible after seeing that...thought i had to dig out the old rubber gloves again!

posted by jennafura on March 22nd 2009 at 3:05am
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So the solution to reducing my water footprint is to go back to living in a mud hut and foraging for food and eating carrion? NO!
How about the excess 4 billion people on the planet just die (2 billion people instead of 6 billion needing water).

posted by Khurt Williams on March 22nd 2009 at 4:44pm
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