When considering what we can do to promote ethical food-sourcing, the latest buzz words have been 'food miles' and the 'carbon footprint'. However, a new measure of sustainability has been dreamt up called the 'water foot print'.

Water Deficit
Driven by increasing world population and therefore water deficits in key regions, the water foot print was designed to bring into sharp relief the amounts of water consumed in basic food production.

The University of Twente in the Netherlands has done a lot of the pioneering work calculating each drop of water used in the production and transportation of foodstuffs around the world, and the results are astonishing.

Water Wasted
Would you imagine that one apple costs us 70 litres of water? Or that 1kg of beef uses 16,000 litres? The figures go further to bring home the importance of recycling than ever before, for example a cotton shirt has a water footprint of 2,700 litres – this includes water used to irrigate, to grow the cotton and to wash away fertilisers. If one shirt was re-used or handed down to someone else, we would be successfully cutting the constant waste-cycle.

Water Footprints
The creators of www.waterfootprint.org have also tallied up the water footprint of each country and created a global average of water consumption per capita. The calculation includes water used within the country's boundaries and the water used outside the county when goods are imported, also known as "virtual water". The country using the most was the United States, whose citizens use 2483 cubic metres per capita per year, closely followed by Italy in second place, using 2332 cubic metres per capita per year.

Reducing Consumption
Stuart Orr, the WWF's freshwater policy officer, stated that it's companies that need to think outside the box when it comes to water consumption, as they could make a serious difference – if not, this cycle will harm their trade. "In exactly the way we've introduced an ecological footprint measurement, we now want to progress to a company water footprint. It's undoubtedly in industry's interests to thoroughly analyse its use of water, and to reduce its consumption wherever possible."