I thought this planet was covered in water? How could we be running out?

97% of the world's water is actually seawater. Of the 3% that is freshwater, three quarters is locked up in ice which leaves just 0.75% for drinking, watering crops and sharing with all the animals, plants and forests. To complicate matters further, demand for freshwater is growing (think population and industrialisation growth), access to water varies enormously from place to place and throughout the year. Plus to top it off water pollution is worsening across the globe.

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So is everyone running out of water?

Water scarcity (the measure of how much is available versus how much is used) is always measured locally, so yes some places are doing better than others. However, even places with reasonably high rainfall levels, e.g. the UK, are facing major problems. This is purely because we use so much of the wet stuff, especially in the South East. So make sure you turn the tap off when you clean your teeth and consider fitting an aerator to your tap.

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What are innocent doing about this?

As with all major environmental issues we are taking this very seriously, which is why we spent quite a bit of time in 2009 mapping the water footprint of our business, focusing on one of our biggest selling recipes the strawberries and bananas smoothie. We will then focus on opportunities to begin improving that footprint, just the same as our carbon footprint which has reduced by approximately 21% since we first measured it in 2006.

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What is a water footprint?

It’s a similar concept to a carbon footprint, except rather than calculating the total amount of carbon released during the making of one of our drinks, we’re looking at total volume of freshwater used. We’re breaking it down so that we can understand water use at every step of the chain, from growing the fruit, to transporting, crushing and blending as well as manufacturing the packaging, bottling the drinks and distributing them to a chiller near you. Breaking it down in this way allows us to firstly calculate an accurate number and secondly to highlight the hotspots so that we can get to work on those right away.

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Can we (as consumers) do anything about this?

There are a number of ways you can reduce your own personal water footprint. There are some good links on the ‘our water actions’ page of our website which you can look at.

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