Report calls for water usage to be reflected on food labels

The report – produced by the Food Ethics Council and the food and farming alliance, Sustain – draws attention to the huge quantities of water it takes to produce the food we eat. It takes 140 litres to produce one cup of coffee, for example, and 16,000 litres to produce one kilogramme of beef.

As water scarcity becomes one of the most pressing environmental issues we face, it is crucial that it is managed more efficiently – accounting for stewardship of water through food labeling is an important part of this, the report suggests.

The report's co-author Tom MacMillan said: "Public awareness of water scarcity remains low. In the UK, citizens are rarely exposed to the direct effects of severe water shortage and cannot readily see the links between their purchases and water shortage in other countries. Water use is not reflected in the price of the final product."

The report is clear that food labels should not only reflect how much water is used, but also where it is used and what environmental impact this has.

Water use matters most where water is taken out of the ecosystem faster than it can be replenished by natural processes, leaving insufficient supplies for basic human needs like drinking, washing, food production and a whole range of other social and economic uses.

The report points out that while agriculture uses an average 24 per cent of water across the EU, this rises to a whopping 80 per cent in some regions. So while tomatoes grown in southern Spanish sunshine (rather than fossil-fuel heated greenhouses) might generate lower greenhouse gas emissions, they will use a lot of water from a region desperately short of it. This should be reflected in their labelling, the report suggests.

Sustain is proposing a single flower-shaped sustainability label, the petals of which would each represent different sustainability issues such as greenhouse gas emissions and fair trade, as well as water usage. The hope is that this single-label approach will be less confusing for an already confused shopping public.

Sustain’s co-ordinator, Jeanette Longfield, who commissioned the report, said: “This information [on water stewardship]should go alongside other vital elements of sustainability, such as greenhouse gases, nutrition, and fair trade, so people can get a full picture of the impact of the food they buy.”

“But, most important, when companies measure their impact they often improve it. Labelling, on the basis of water stewardship, could soon offer people products that cause less environmental damage.”

Quite how soon these labels will be appearing of our food is not entirely clear. The report examines some of the work currently being done to establish standards for water stewardship, but admits that none of these approaches is yet sufficiently advanced to provide the basis for Sustain’s label.

Tom MacMillan said: “The Istanbul World Water Week in 2009 established core standards so people could pilot water stewardship certification. I’d expect it to be a few years before water stewardship labels might appear in any big way.”