Spotted this over at swissmiss. It’s an intriguing graphic from GOOD magazine showing how much water each of us use in our daily activities. It’s the first I’ve read of water footprints (vs. the more common carbon footprint) the amount of water an individual uses.

“Water footprints can be hard to calculate, depending on how far up the chain of production you go,

since everything you eat and buy used some water to produce (to feed cows for beef, for example, or to use in the factory that made your cell phone). With GOOD Magazine’s latest Transparency, they give you some examples of how much water is used in some of your daily activities, so that you can begin calculate your footprint and try to reduce your gallons.

To help put things in perspective, think about this: your standard trash barrel holds 32 gallons and a mid-sized passenger car—if pumped full of water—has room for a little more than 800 gallons. So, the difference in the amount of water it takes to produce a pound of chicken and a pound of beef is enough to fill almost two whole cars.”

That was a shocker. I knew about the 44 pounds of grain it took to produce one pound of beef, but 800 gallons of water…