Green Stats: 2,500
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 10.30.07
2,500 -- the "water footprint" of the US, in cubic meters per capita, according to Waterfootprint.org.
660,430 -- the equivalent in US gallons per person per year. Compare that to 700 cubic meters per year per capita (184,920 gallons) in China and 1150 cubic meters per year per capita (303,798 gallons) in Japan.
According to the site, "The water footprint of a nation shows the total volume of water that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the nation. Since not all goods consumed in one particular country are produced in that country, the water footprint consists of two parts: use of domestic water resources and use of water outside the borders of the country. The water footprint includes both the water withdrawn from surface and groundwater and the use of soil water (in agricultural production)." ::Water Footprint
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While I think the 'water foot print' may be a good measurement tool and the data in the article accurate, I worry that the 'tool' maybe flawed. Does the total amount of calculated water consumption include/or not the H2O put back into the water cycle?
Evaporation, transpiration, urination, exhalation.....
What is the math behind the calculation?
Who is doing the adding/subtracting?
etc.
etc
i think the water footprint picture is really cute lol
I don't understand the calculator. Is all meat processed using the same amount of water? I don't eat beef or pork, just chicken, wild caught salmon and venison our family kills and processes ourselves. Yet my results were rather high despite only consuming a couple pounds of meat a week.
Every time I've processed chicken, fish or deer myself the water consumption was quite low.