Monday, August 16, 2010

Food and Water

Not many people out there understand the amount of water it takes to produce the things they love. I recently interviewed Kath McConnachie, the head of Rhodes Organisation for Animal Rights. She is very knowledgeable about these kind fo things, specifically realting to food production, and is a firm activist in ths arena. She was easy to interview and provided lots of statistics and mind-boggling facts. I will definitely use a lot of her stuff to direct clarity on the issue to the community. Let's look at some of the stuff she presented as well as some further research I have done.

It takes 14 litres of water to convert a chicken into a carcass for consumption.
For a cow it takes about 900 litres, a pig takes 300 litres and a sheep 250 litres.

Looking further into this, and to gain some perspective on the matter: If every South African family ate one less chicken a month, it would save 1.5 billion litres of water per year. That is enough drinking water for 21, 000 low income families for a year.  This is according to Compassion in World Farming.

According to Water Footprints, it takes as much as 90 litres of water to produce 1 pint of beer, 600 litres to produce a 2 litre soda bottle, and a startling 2,270 litres of water to produce one single pair of Levi's jeans.
Im not only finding my research helpful for my show, but enlightening for my own awareness too.
I hope you follow me on this journey to a more sustainable lifestyle!

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