Does it take more water to make a cup of coffee or fill a bath?
The question sounds daft but according to an estimate of the “water footprint” of goods, it takes 140 litres to produce a cup of coffee drunk in the Netherlands, mainly because of the water needed to growcoffee beans in the tropics.
Many baths would fill with less.
According to a study, tea is a better choice in a world likely to face more strains on water supplies, partlylinked to global warming. A cup of tea accounts for “just” 35 litres of water, it reckons.
Meanwhile, a kilo of beef needs 16,000 litres of water — largely because ofthe plants eaten by cows during their lifetimes. A kilo of maize needsa fraction of the amount for meat at 900litres.
Some people use suchbeef/maize data asan argument for greater consumption of vegetables.
So will you be drinking less coffee, or eating less beef?
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6 comments so far
seems to me that cutting down on beef would be better.
I know nothing of coffee production, do they irrigate or are the 140 liters from rainfall? If it is all rain-feed growth, then coffee is not a problem…but like all mass agriculture that seems highly unlikely.
- Posted by Ben ClarkWow, just read this today. I am a big coffee drinker, 5 cups a day, so I am in big time trouble. OUCH. but very interesting, thanks for this.
btw, Alister, i created “The James E Lovelock Virtual Museum of Global Warming Adaptation Strategies” here:
- Posted by dan bloomhttp://pcillu101.blogspot.com
Hi Ben, good point…this link give more details about coffee production and water. at a glance washing and pulping the beans also involves a lot of water: not sure how much irrigation is needed.
http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Re port14.pdf
- Posted by alister doyleI wonder if there is a difference in water usage between Shade Grown coffee and non-?
- Posted by PadraicThis is an absurd discussion. How much water consumed in the production of certain goods is an irrelevant statistic. Only when water is diverted from one type of use so that it can be used for another, can meaningful data be gathered. If coffee is grown in mountainous regions of Columbia, Hawaii, Rwanda, Indonesia, etc. where rainfall is plentiful and what isn’t used by the coffee trees washes out to sea, then the water usage is a non-factor. By contrast, when irrigation channels are dug in the desert to turn barren land into crop production, and the resulting flow of the river dwindles to the point where downstream availability of the water for sustaining life is significantly diminished, then the wisdom of that use of water must be questioned. Growing fruits and vegetables in the Imperial Valley probably has far more negative consequencesm from a water consumption standpoint, than does growing coffee in Brazil.
- Posted by Brian[...] my main caffeine fix ever since I read that when you consider the water involved in growing coffee, coffee wastes a lot more water than tea. Tea is clearly the better choice as far as my “water footprint” goes. But [...]
- Posted by Reasons to switch from tea to coffee | Bohemian Revolution