Want some coffee with your water?

Guilty. I love a great cup of coffee. Black and warm, on a gray rainy day like this, with books piling around me (alright, I guess in this instance I'm looking at newspapers and transcripts and doing so in a virtual sense — thank you USC Libraries and your various databases), it's a welcome companion.

As this morning stretched into afternoon, I actually turned to green tea, not coffee. I'd like to say it was an ethically or environmentally-minded decision, but it was, indeed, purely selfish. I've been overdoing the coffee a bit lately and wondering if a break's in order.

Now I have a whole new reason for the landscape of my mind to be ravaged by battles over the choice of green tea and coffee: Thanks to Peter Gordon, I've just learned the Economist posted an item Feb. 25 showing it takes nearly 10 times as much water to brew a cup of coffee as it does a cup of tea, including the water used in farming, packaging and other processes. The data is pretty amazing, and shows just how much water we require for so many other products as well.

Here's a quote:

Consumers may already be aware of the environmental impact of producing goods in terms of energy or pollution, but they might be surprised to learn how much water is needed to create some daily goods. A cup of coffee, for example, needs a great deal more water than that poured into the pot.

I won't be the first nor last to say it, but this is yet another instance where our actions and decisions clearly have a far more removed, and possibly larger, impact than we imagine. Whether this sways anybody to drink less coffee or not, I hope it reminds people to just more fully consider their options.