Photo credit: Rich Anderson, Flickr
A few years ago, engineers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands worked out the “water footprint”—that is the amount of fresh water used in the production or supply of goods and services—by country. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the United States topped the list of average consumer consumption at 2,842 cubic meters per year. But what comes as a shock is that meat consumption is responsible for 30% of that figure. A pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water.
