No rehydration for a day is a trying experience, for two days it becomes perilous, for three days it is usually fatal. Beyond this existential necessity, translating to a per capita average of about 750 kilograms (or liters, or 0.75 cubic meters) of water a year, there are several other—and much more voluminous—water needs: for personal hygiene, co

It takes forty-eight gallons of water to make a gallon of beer, four gallons of water to make one of soda. Even a cow has a water footprint, drinking four gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk.

we waste water enormously and, so far, we have been slow to adopt many effective changes that would reverse undesirable habits and trends.