Wiggly wigglers Podcast

As I have written many times before on this blog in 2007 I was awarded a Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust Scholarship to study water issues. We has our conference a couple of weeks ago in Exeter where all the 2007 scholars returned and presented their findings.
One of my fellow 2007 scholars is Heather Gorringe, founder of Wiggly Wigglers a mail order eco gardening products company. Those six words to not begin to express the scope and breadth of the business so do check out the website. The company is also the first ever winner of the Global Dell Small Business Excellence Award. They received their award because of their pioneering work using social media to extend the success of their business and also to communicate the essence of their business mission and their shared, and opposing, hopes and opinions on environmental an sustainability issues through blogging and their podcasts.
Heather's study was how rural businesses and farmers can benefit from social media. At the conference Heather captured some of our conversation that we had over a cup of tea and has broadcast it as part of her latest podcast - number 0158 to be precise. We were musing over why water is important globally and locally, why should we care, whether we coerce or enable people to have less of an impact on the environment and many other things, plus I tell a joke at the end which is most uncharacteristic.
Do check it out and let me know what you think.

Water footprint of cotton

Well, in my quest to determine our family water footprint I have been looking at the water footprint of cotton products - see the link to the water footprint website.

1 pair of jeans = 10, 850 litres of virtual water
1 t-shirt = 2,7,20 litres of virtual water

(Source http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report18.pdf )

These are average figures and the water used to produce cotton products varies greatly between countries the range of water used to produce the fabric being between 6 and 21.5 million litres per tonne. However this compares with a virtual water content for tea of between 5 and 16.6 million litres per tonne and coffee of between 6 and 49 million litres per tonne depending on where the crop is grown. (Source: http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report18.pdf )

In the UK we buy around 86 million pairs of jeans per year - that's around 372, 000 (yes thousand!!) olympic size swimming pools of water per year!

So after this poultrydiscussion we will definitely be looking at our clothes in a different light!

Water footprint

Have you checked your water footprint yet?
There is a very informative website where you can investigate water usage either individually or as a nation. There is a good calculator where you can work out your personal water footprint - it is interesting to see the impact of diet on your water footprint! Click on the link waterfootprint.org to find out more

Nuffield Scholarship

Louise has been awarded a 2007 Nuffield Scholarship, by the Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust. The study has been sponsored by the John Oldacre Foundation. The title of the study is "The impact of water quality and availability on food production." Watch this space for more details.