It’s long been known that our diet choices help determine our carbon footprint. But do you know which of your favourite foods are the most water-hungry?
Cities relied entirely on conserving and recycling water to get through the last big drought. We now have desalination plants, but getting the most out of our water reserves still makes sense.
Sydney and Melbourne are bringing desalination plants back on stream and Adelaide plans to increase its plant’s output. Perth depends on desalination. But is it the best way to achieve water security?
While making small volumes of pure water in a lab is possible, it’s not practical. The reaction is expensive, releases lots of energy, and can cause really massive explosions.
Water and energy use are becoming more efficient, which is good news for both the economy and the environment. But Australia has yet to realise the value of national environmental accounting.
Residents of a small Victorian town realised that delicious water can be a curse as well as a blessing, when they lost a legal battle to stop a local farmer shipping groundwater to a nearby bottling plant.
Perth is looking at recycling all its sewage in the city’s future water supply. But many Australians’ drinking water already contains indirectly recycled treated sewage.