Have you ever wondered how much water it takes to make a Starbucks grande latte? I hadn’t until I met Jason Clay.
Jason is a Missouri farm boy who earned a Phd in anthropology from Cornell, wrote a definitive book on agriculture and the environment and is now senior vice president for market transformation at the World Wildlife Fund. (I wrote this column about him last year for fortune.com.) He’s one of those people who is always bursting with both facts and ideas, so I was pleased to run into him today in Atlanta, where we had both been invited to speak to senior executives of Coca Cola Enterprises, the big bottler of Coke products and a FORTUNE 500 company in its own right. CCE is doing great work on sustainability, but that’s another story.
Jason’s presentation was mind-expanding, as usual, but my favorite part came when he analyzed the “embedded water” in a Starbucks latte. There’s a terrific video about this at the WWF website; view it by clicking on the coffee cup.
Here’s the breakdown, by liters, of the water needed to make that latte:
0.1 for the water itself
2.5 to make the plastic lid
5.5 to make the paper cup and sleeve
7.5 to grow the sugar
49.5 to feed the cows that make the milk
143 to grow the coffee
That adds up to more than 200 liters of water to make a latte.
Now, this doesn’t mean we should stop drinking lattes. The water to grow coffee, after all, comes in the form of tropical rainstorms, which are abundant. And a bowl of Rice Krispies with milk has a much bigger water footprint: According to Jason, roughly 58% of all the water on the planet used by people for any purpose—farming, manufacturing, cooling nuclear power plants, swimming pools, showers—is used to grow rice. His point is that we, collectively, need to better understand the full environmental impacts of all that we consume. Then we need to make and grow things more efficiently, and consume less of them.
That not as simple as it may sound. One common mistake in the world of business and sustainability is to optimize for a single outcome—sell more organic cotton, say, or wild-caught fish, or fair trade tea—without understanding the overall impact of products on water, energy, soil, land use, even poverty alleviation. Favoring organics might, for example, limit the development of genetically modified foods that require less water and fewer fertilizers. Clay’s open to the idea of GMOs as tools to grow more calories on less land. “Let’s be a little more neutral on the technology,” he says, “and a little more focused on the results.”
The need for clear thinking about such matters is urgent because population and, more important, consumption are growing fast.
“We’re beginning to wake up to the fact that we live in a finite world,” Clay says. “Business as usual is not going to set things right.”
“The average cat in Europe has a larger environmental footprint than the average African over a lifetime because of the fish it eats,” he says. [I’m going ask Jason for the data to back up that claim next time we meet.]
So what’s he doing to provoke change? He’s working with big companies like Coca-Cola, Mars, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart, urging them to take a thorough, science-driven approach to their supply chains, so they use less water, produce fewer greenhouse gases, make less waste and protecting forests. That’s because these companies have scale and clout.
“Working with 300 to 500 companies is easier than working with 6.7 billion consumers,” he says.
Of course, consumers should be urged to reduce, reuse and recycle, but Clay argues that it’s unrealistic to expect even committed and well-informed consumers to drink their coffee black or switch from Rice Krispies to oatmeal.
“Consumers shouldn’t be asked to make those choices,” Clay says. “We think they ought to have only good choices on the shelves.”
[...] Marc Gunther » The anatomy of a latte [...]
Marc, This post really hits me where I live…So I’ll be more thoughtful in my latte habits and save 7 liters by consistently reusing my travel mug. (I accounted for 1 liter to wash the mug.)
I couldn’t agree more with Clay and his opinion on Genetically Modified food. I don’t think we should go overboard on testing the limits, but the simple fact is that there isn’t enough land to feed everyone, and the space/people gap grows every day.
Some people are afraid of modified food though, and I think that there fear comes from the way people “package” the information about it.
What I mean by “packaging” is just like the way Clay describes the latte. I understand it is written in that way to make people aware of what goes into our everyday products, but one must admit upon first glance that it is a bit alarmist. Sure, once you realize that the water comes from storms, and it is part of nature, and that most of that water goes right back into the cycle…
But the first impression in the mind is of water being pulled from some tiny reservoir, starving out the indigenous flora and fauna of pristine lands.
Please, I’m not suggesting Clay is trying to incite something, or that this is a tactic used only by a select few; he’s just making a point, and it is a good one.
My problem is what people do with bits of information like that, on either side of any argument. Of course I’m for anything that brings people to conserve more, but people often take extreme sides, and that really takes the focus off the realities. Back to the case of Genetically Modified foods, the case against it (with some) is that this “Frankenfood” is bad for you. There is so much hype built around the possible health risks, that other issues of GMOs–patents that allow lawyers to sue small farmers who accidentally have patented seed spill on their land–are going unnoticed in the mainstream media.
The “committed and well-informed consumer” is depending on good information, but there seems to be a catch in informing them. You’ve got to get there attention, but the big picture always spills over the page.
Marc —
Great post. When I was working with PlayPumps while at the Case Foundation, we created a really cool website (www.knowh2o.org) to help educate people of all ages about the world water crisis. Anyone who found your post today interesting might want to check out the site above, take the water quiz, and learn about the water required for all sorts of things, from making a pair of blue jeans to flushing a toilet.
Enjoy!
Marc, you are right to caution that raw data should be seen in context. Environmentalists have been frightening concerned consumers by using big numbers to scare people for some time now. Remember the question: “How much land would be needed to grow the corn, to feed the chickens, if every person in China were to eat an egg for breakfast?” Answer: Australia. Although the real answer is a lot more complicated and involves demographics, technology, culture and the ability to take appropriate action.
Data on embedded water are fascinating. But what do I do with this information? I can use a travel mug to drink my coffee, but how do I reduce the water in my computer? Or the water it takes to keep your blog afloat on the web?
[...] Marc Gunther relays these figures from the WWF’s Jason Clay on the amount of water in a latte. The total? Over 200 litres for one cup. Here’s the breakdown, by liters, of the water needed to make that latte: [...]