Wasting Water

With World Water Week having just concluded, there’s been plenty of talk about the scarcity of water. And I was interested to hear the latest on the link between water and food waste.

Still, I was stunned by this statement:

“More than one-fourth of all the water we use worldwide is taken to grow over one billion tons of food that nobody eats,” said Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

It’s unclear what study produced such a figure, but it’s certainly eye-catching. One caveat–I’m guessing that this estimate used a 50% food waste estimate, as seen in a prior SIWI study, which counted grains fed to livestock as wasted (due to the inefficiency).

Regardless of the exact statistics, the linked water waste is one of the major impacts of food waste. As to how they’re linked, it’s simple: Wasting food squanders all the water used to produce that food.

On that note, Taste the Waste of Water offers this great mix of facts and images:

Find further info on water and food security on the neat UN World Water Day site.