Cucumbers are, as many already know, made out of a lot of water. To be precise the cucumber consists of 95% water!
Globally about 21% of the world’s freshwater use and 28% of arable land goes to grow the food we don’t eat. — FAO
And because the cucumber is the star of the week here at GRIM we would like to take some time to talk a bit about water. Did you know that it takes around 40min of showering to produce one pound of cucumber? — Yes, one! Maybe cucumbers aren’t your thing then how about bananas or avocadoes? Well, a pound of bananas is equivalent to taking a shower of about two hours or filling a bathtub one and a half times while the avocado is equivalent to filling a smaller Jacuzzi large enough to accommodate six people! Okay, enough of making you guys feel guilty for eating these lovely vegetables, this just goes to say that it is important that we get the most out of the vegetables that we produce and waste as little as possible. The water footprint is an important factor when talking about food waste.
If you want to know more about how much water it takes to produce some of your favourite veggies then check out this article from treehugger.com.
Water is a valuable resource and should not be taken for granted. Every year in Denmark we waste 700.000 tons of food that could have been eaten and 133,000 tons of that is wasted before the food hits the supermarkets. In the UK more than £1bn worth of food is wasted or fed to animals each year.
But why is water usage so important?
Well… You see, water might be the perfect example of why it is important to zoom-out sometimes then talking about sustainability and look at the bigger picture. We see water coming out of the tap every day, clean enough to wash our hands with and even drink. But it takes a bit of energy to get to this stage. So by using less water we by not wasting so many vegetables we can reduce the amount of energy being used to pump and treat the water and thereby the amount of CO2 need to produce this energy. We also use chemicals to treat the water and by using less water we can then use fewer chemicals and fewer chemicals mean that we use fewer recourses which eventually leads to a smaller impact on our environment and climate changes.
Water fun-fact:
And you might think that water is everywhere but drinking is actually a very limited resource that we have to treat with great respect. There are an estimated 326 million trillion gallons of water on earth of which only 1% is drinkable. If the entire world’s water were fit into a 4-litre jug, the freshwater available for us would equal only about 1 table-spoon.
Here at GRIM, we fight food-waste and thereby some of this water usage by, one ugly vegetable at the time, changing the way we look at the beauty standards and save some of the veggies that are too ugly for the supermarkets and give them to you guys in our GRIM boxes.
Read more about the GRIM boxes here: https://www.eatgrim.dk/ and follow us on www.instagram.com/eatgrim and www.facebook.com/eatgrim.dk
