How much water is there in your boots?
Back to Topic
Click to Print
Useful Websites
Glossary Term Selection
Friends of the Earth has published major new research which sets out the environmental impact of making the products we use every day.
We want to live within the limits of what the planet can provide so first we need to measure what we are using. We asked environmental data experts Trucost to find out how much land and water is needed to make our food, our clothes and our gadgets – through the whole supply chain.
And it’s a lot. A pair of leather boots could take 14 tonnes of water and 50m2 of land to make – mostly because of the massive resources used raising cattle. An extra ten tonnes of water is used if the leather tanning companies don’t control their pollution though. Sadly that’s common in places like Hazaribarch in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
By looking at the whole supply chain we were also able to discover the ‘hotspots’ – the processes that use up the most resources. For example, we found that 55% of the land needed to make a smartphone is actually used in the box it comes in, ...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites
