September 29, 2023

It's easy to forget that water is used to grow everything we eat as well as produce almost all of the products we use every day. It often surprises people to learn how much water is needed to grow and produce everything around us. 

See if you can correctly guess at how much water is needed to produce the following items below. Click on the blue bars to find the answer!

 

A Pound of Bread

 

About 200 gallons of water is needed to produce bread! Most of this is used to grow the wheat flower needed for bread as well as during production.

Cup of Coffee

 

A single cup of coffee needs about 37 gallons of water to grow and process the beans. Each year, the world uses about 120 billion cubic meters of water in order to drink coffee.

One Tomato

 

The average tomato uses about 66 gallons of water to grow to full maturity.

Pizza Margherita

 

A small pizza takes roughly 333 gallons of water to produce all the ingredients. The water breakdown per ingredient is mozzarella cheese (50%), wheat flour (44%) and tomato puree (6%).

One pint of beer

 

90% of beer is made up up water but water is also needed to grow the wheat and barley. To get a pint of beer you'll need 45 gallons of water.

A single sheet of paper

 

One sheet of paper requires three gallons of water to produce.

A bar of chocolate

 

454 gallons of water are needed to grow enough cocoa beans to produce a single bar of chocolate.

Pair of adult-sized jeans

 

To grow enough cotton for a pair of jeans, 2,636 gallons of water are needed.

 

Sources:
Water Footprint Calculator: https://www.watercalculator.org/
USGS:http://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-watercontent.html