Why do we need so much water to produce everything?

Question

For example, i’ve read somewhere that we need around 3,7Litres of water to produce a single cigarette and 2700Litres of water to produce a single t-shirt. Why do we need so much water to produce stuff?

In: 96

Answer 1

Water is a very important industrial material. A *lot* of chemistry is done between chemicals dissolved in water, you often use water to wash impurities or excess chemical away after using it, and of course water is used in the production of raw materials (in your examples, tobacco or cotton farming). I have no idea if your quoted numbers are actually accurate, but it is certainly true that we use a LOT of water in industrial processes.