Sep 2004

How much water goes into making a cup of coffee? Now this looks like a silly question with an obvious answer: one cup of water. Actually, about 140 litres of water is needed to put a cup of coffee on your table!
Two Dutch economists, A K Chapagain and A Y Hoekstra, have calculated the amount of water used in the entire production process for coffee—from growing the plant to roasting the beans to grinding them. That’s how they arrived at the surprising result: 140 litres of water are needed to make a cup of coffee.

There are many premises at the basic level that have gone unquestioned for a half century. One of them is: the life of a building depends on the strength of the building material. If the soil bearing capacity of earth is 2-3 kg/sq cm. then it would seem irrational to use building materials of 300-400 kg/sq cm. The strength of the material required is the direct consequence of its surface requirement. Surface engineered building materials require serious consideration. Traditionally, a considerable amount of importance was given

It is when people respond with questions, doubts, misgivings, that we see a groundswell of opinion generating, and that can bring change. The last few weeks has seen us getting numbers of letters from many well-meaning people. A small-scale industrialist with an acre-plus in an industrial area in Bangalore seeks help in recycling waste waters; a pensioner now building a house in a northern suburb of Mumbai wants to know how he could harvest rainwaters; there is another young man in the city asking how his father’s home at a smaller, distant town could be made water-positive