News and Notes

Be Good to the Last Drop

A new way to calculate your water footprint

By Lauren Fox August 18, 2010

Things you’ve done in order to conserve water this summer: upgraded to high-efficiency appliances, xeriscaped the lawn, and hung a stopwatch in the shower. You won’t even flush the toilet—unless, you know, you really have to. In other words, you’ll do whatever it takes to save a gallon or two.

But after taking Blue Legacy’s new Water Footprint Survey you might find even more innovative ways to go easy on the planet’s collective faucet.

From cutting back on how many burgers you eat to—gasp—skipping a cup of coffee or two, the survey highlights just how quickly our everyday choices can balloon our water use footprint. (One pound of beef, for example, requires up to 1,800 gallons of water to produce.) And by educating consumers on such details, Blue Legacy, hopes to inspire folks to trim their water use by 20 percent.

On the downside, the survey might also reveal that you’re not the saintly water saver you thought you were. But on the other hand, if you score better than expected, we won’t tell anyone if you order those happy hour sliders tonight.

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