Foundations

The method, the arithmetic and the reasons behind everything else on the site.

Everything else on this site rests on a few ideas, and these articles set them out. How much of the planet's water is actually available to people, and where it is. How a water footprint is counted, and what green, blue and grey water mean. Why a number on a product is a fact about the farm that made it and not a verdict on the person who bought it.

They are the method behind every figure here, written so that a reader with no background in water can follow the sums and check them.

They are also where the site says what it is for: an educational stream from inside the water industry, without the hooks, the guilt or the slogans, for people who would rather understand a number than be told what to feel about it.

The turn Every number in the first month of this series was spent before the product reached anyone, in fields and factories. Read enough of them and they start to feel like an accusation. They are not one, and the reason is a property of factory water that changes everything: it is concentrated, and concentrated water can be fixed. 9 August 2026

The 0.3% Everyone learns at school that seventy percent of the planet is water. Almost none of it is water people can use. Where the rest is, why the small usable share never runs out, and why cities run dry anyway. 7 August 2026

The water you can't see Most people drink about two litres of water a day and use several thousand, and almost none of it comes out of a tap. Where it goes, how anyone counts it, and why someone who has spent a career inside the water industry decided to write it all down. 6 August 2026