Everything You Know About Water Conservation Is Wrong

Forget short showers. Worry about the 6,340 gallons of "virtual water" in your leather bag.

By Thomas M. Kostigen
May 28, 2008 12:00 AMMay 17, 2019 8:35 PM

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I’ve been mindful of the amount of water I use when making a pot of coffee ever since learning that one-third of the tap water used for drinking in North America is actually used to brew our daily cups of joe—and that if each of us avoided wasting just one cupful of coffee a day, we could save enough water over the course of a year to provide two gallons to every one of the more than 1.1 billion people who don’t have access to freshwater at all.

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