Butter

The global average water footprint of whole cow milk is about 940 litre/kg. About 28% of this amount is allocated to the butter that is derived from the whole milk and the remaining 72% to skim milk. One kilogram of whole milk gives about 50 gram of butter, so that the water footprint of butter is 5550 litre/kg (Mekonnen and Hoekstra, 2010, 2012).

Assuming a fat content in butter of 872 gram/kg, this means that the water footprint of butter is 6.4 litre of water per gram of fat, which is low when compared to other animal products.

Publications

2012	Mekonnen, M.M. and Hoekstra, A.Y. (2012) A global assessment of the water footprint of farm animal products, Ecosystems, 15(3): 401-415.		Download 0.5 MB
2010	Mekonnen, M.M. and Hoekstra, A.Y. (2010) The green, blue and grey water footprint of farm animals and animal products, Value of Water Research Report Series No.48, UNESCO-IHE.	Main Report Volume 1	Download 0.5 MB
		Appendices Volume 2	Download 4.1 MB

Global average water footprint

5553 litre/kg

85% green, 8% blue, 7% grey