A report by the Engineering the Future Alliance found that two thirds of the water each person in Britain uses is imported from abroad.

Not that you can see the water, it’s embedded in products we use. For example, for everything that is involved in making a cup of coffee – growing the beans, harvesting, processing etc – 140 litres/246 pints of water is used. If you have four cups of coffee in a day, that’s well over 500 litres of water, and that’s not counting the hot water you poured onto the coffee granules!  To make one pint of beer, 130 pints/74 litres of water are used.   Are you wearing a cotton T-shirt? The production of a single cotton T-shirt uses 2,000 litres of water.

Here are a few more figures that might just surprise you:
• Each cup of tea uses 30 litres of water
• Each loaf of bread accounts of 440 litres
• Each bag of sugar – 1,500 litres
• Each beef steak uses 3,875 litres
and perhaps most amazing is that one pair of jeans uses a massive 10,850 litres

It makes you think, though, where is all this water coming from and can the countries producing our goods spare these quantities of water?