Letters: The west bottles out on water use

Per capita consumption of 4,645 litres of water a day that also impoverishes people and ecosystems worldwide is bad enough (Reports, August 20). But the situation is much worse than the WWF report on our water footprint suggests. Lest we forget, Britons throw away about 40% of the food that they buy, which, when added to all other forms of waste, represents embedded water loss on a gigantic scale. So this is not just a shocking fact about how much water we consume. Rather, it's a jaw-dropping story of how much water we waste that impoverishes others. Until we come to respect the intrinsic, and not just the economic, value of water, and until we regard its management as a matter of ethics and morals - based on a new economic model that is about replenishment and nurturing - behaviour change will not happen soon enough to make... [read full story]