Virtual Water

Water is probably one of the most precious resources and vital for everyone’s everyday life. In spite of this obvious fact, people use large amounts of water: drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc.
One of the most important research papers in this field is Chapagain, A.K. and Hoekstra, A.Y. (2004), "Water footprints of nations", UNESCO-IHE, Delft, the Netherlands.
Designer Timm Kekeritz created a poster, visualizing parts of their research data, to make the issue of virtual water and the water footprint perceptible.
One side of the poster visualizes the water footprint of selected nations, emphasizing the im- and export of virtual water. The other side shows the virtual water content of selected foods and commodities.
The main intention of this poster is to show how much freshwater is used to produce selected products - hoping for people to rethink their consumption patterns. The visualization of nation’s footprints tries to draw the big picture and sensitize for local problems in different parts of the world.