It’s long been known that our diet choices help determine our carbon footprint. But do you know which of your favourite foods are the most water-hungry?
There’s broad support from communities and farmers for proper water audits.
John/Flickr
Cities relied entirely on conserving and recycling water to get through the last big drought. We now have desalination plants, but getting the most out of our water reserves still makes sense.
The largest desalination plant in Australia, Victoria’s A$3.5 billion ‘water factory’ can supply nearly a third of Melbourne’s needs.
Nils Versemann/Shutterstock
Sydney and Melbourne are bringing desalination plants back on stream and Adelaide plans to increase its plant’s output. Perth depends on desalination. But is it the best way to achieve water security?
Neither of the two federal investigations into fish deaths in the Darling River include any Indigenous representation.
Chemicals poured down the sink or pumped into the atmosphere can eventually end up in the groundwater, which means less available fresh water for us to use.
Flickr/Kamil Porembiński
While making small volumes of pure water in a lab is possible, it’s not practical. The reaction is expensive, releases lots of energy, and can cause really massive explosions.
A farmer weeding his maize crop south of Harare, Zimbabwe.
EPA/ Aaron Ufumeli
Footprints get people thinking about their own impact, but for water the analogy simply doesn’t work.
The latest Australian Environmental-Economic Accounts tell us waste production is rising with GDP, but the information is incomplete and widely ignored.
Estormiz/Wikimedia
Water and energy use are becoming more efficient, which is good news for both the economy and the environment. But Australia has yet to realise the value of national environmental accounting.
People in the HaMakuya community go without potable water for months.
Melissa McHale
Residents of a small Victorian town realised that delicious water can be a curse as well as a blessing, when they lost a legal battle to stop a local farmer shipping groundwater to a nearby bottling plant.
A new report finds concerns about water infrastructure tops the list for Canada’s water providers.
(Shutterstock)
World Water Day shines a light on the importance of safe, clean drinking water, but a new report finds Canada’s freshwater systems are under stress.
The Hawkesbury’s waters look beautifully natural but treated sewage makes up to 20% of the river flow where the North Richmond Filtration Plant draws its water.
Karl Baron/flickr
Perth is looking at recycling all its sewage in the city’s future water supply. But many Australians’ drinking water already contains indirectly recycled treated sewage.
A fisherman at work in the White Nile. Half the river’s flow is lost to evaporation from the Sudd swamps, a large wetland.
Arne Hoel/World Bank/Flickr