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Another Argument for Team Vegetarian: It Reduces Water Waste

You'd think veggies, being 80 percent water lots of the time, and requiring water to grow, would use up a lot of H2O, right? Wrong! Behold, yet...

Siobhan O'Connor
By Siobhan O'ConnorMar 19, 2009
Siobhan O'Connor
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You'd think veggies, being 80 percent water lots of the time, and requiring water to grow, would use up a lot of H2O, right? Wrong! Behold, yet another point for Team-Cut-Down-Your-Meat-Intake. Allow me to call your attention to our new Transparency, specifically how much water it takes to make a steak. Or a burger. Or even the small-by-comparison amount required to produce a pound of chicken: 287 gallons, which is 281 gallons more than it takes to flush the toilet. And it's even more if you take into account this bizarre practice in China of injecting water into livestock to up its weight (and, by extension, its selling price).So here is it, folks: Even if you sat at home flushing the toilet all day long, it would still waste less water than the rearing and butchering of one pound of rib eye. Which means the number one thing you can do to have a smaller water-wasting footprint is to consume less beef, specifically, and meat in general. To calculate your water footprint, click here.Awesome image (from the national archives, 1932-1947) via

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