It’s only when you run out of water that you realise how vital it is, observes Rupert Wright in ‘Take Me to the Source’. His book — along with ‘Water: the Final Resource’, by Robin Griffiths and William Houston — suggests we should be just as concerned about access to water as we are about oil.
Now smart (and pessimistic) investors, perhaps noting Barcelona’s water crisis last week, are tipping the clear stuff as the next liquid gold.
After all, it takes 2,866 gallons of water just to make a pair of jeans, says Big Picture — which also predicts great swathes of the oil-rich Middle East, Africa and Asia will be seriously dry by 2020.
Greece, Libya, Russia, and Mali top the per-capita use table, but overall, it’s Asia that swallows 50 per cent of the world’s water supply.
Forward-thinking business GE has already taken note. It plans to cut water consumption by 20 per cent — that’s 3,000 Olympic swimming pools — using its own recycling products.
It’s also demonstrating water’s earning potential. Under its ‘Ecoimagination’ initiative, it has already done so well on sales of environmental products, including water treatment and filtration technology, that it’s upped its 2010 target to $25bn.
Liquid assets, indeed.
Image by Snap CC2.0.
