How consuming Queal has helped you save water and be more sustainable.

Why we think it's important.

We live on a blue planet. Most of it is covered in water (71%), which in theory should be awesome. Alas, we don't have access to much of the water we see. Of all that water only 2,5% is fresh (not oceans, see this chart by Igor Shiklomanov). But of that small slice, only 1,2% is surface water, the rest is locked in the ground or ice. And from that last percentage (0,03% of all water), we get most from rivers, which is only 0,49% of that slice.

Water is precious and we can't afford to waste it. When we think of water use, things like showers, water from the tap and other household uses come to mind. In actuality there is a lot more hidden loss of water going on. A part of this is in the clothes we wear (2700 litres for a t-shirt). Another large part is in the meat that most people eat ( 600 litres per kg of pig meat).

In a calculation from the great book, "The Hidden Impact", it's estimated that 86% of your hidden water use comes from food, 13% from products, and only 1% is the non-hidden tap water you use. You can calculate your hidden impact (including water use) on the authors website.

At Queal, we hope to have a positive impact on the world. With regards to water we think we're having an impact. Together, our customers have saved over 350.000.000 litres of water. That more than 140 Olympic swimming pools filled to the brink. Or filling the Burj Al Khalifa to about 1/4th of the total volume. Or more than 4.5 million 10 minute showers. We think that's quite impressive.

How we've calculated it.

We've made the assumption that most people eat meat in many of their meals (only about 5% of our demographic is vegetarian). From our 2017 survey, we did see that 11% of consumers of complete meals are (and/or were already before) vegetarian.

With this, we've used the available data to estimate the water consumption from eating meat-based meals in comparison to eating Queal. We've combined the data from different countries (times the meals shipped there), to get an approximation of the litres of water saved. We take into account the differences in consumption levels for poultry-, bovine-, pig-, sheep-, and goat-meat, and associated water-costs.

Not everyone at Queal believes in eating less or no meat because of ethical reasons, but everyone agrees that this is a very effective way of protecting the environment. Water is a vital part of the world (heck, even your body is 60-65% water) and we should do our best to not waste any of it.

What else you can do to save water.

I hope you've enjoyed reading about how we're saving water together by switching some meals to Queal. Here are some additional tips on how to save water.

• Buy second-hand clothes (as mentioned above, a t-shirt costs 2700 litres of water)
• Eat your vegetables (they use less than 10% of the water of bovine meat, per kilocalorie)
• Use your old phone for a bit longer (it takes 13000 litres to make a phone)