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Wonderwater Café at Tian Hai restaurant, Beijing, 2011

Tian Hai restaurant
 

The Wonderwater Café menu illustrated the breakdown of water used to produce ingredients for Tian Hai’s dishes
 

Tian Hai restaurant menu with Wonderwater stickers which showed the water footprint of favourite dishes
 

Flags indicated the water footprint level: low, medium or high
 

Wonderwater Café: How Much Water Do You Eat?
Beijing, Helsinki, London and Milan, 2011–2019

The Wonderwater Café,  an initiative by Jane Withers and Kari Korkman, CEO Helsinki Design Week, aims to raise awareness of the water footprint of food and make us think about the impact of what we eat on local and global water resources. Wonderwater menus illustrate the breakdown of water used to produce the ingredients for dishes served in the cafés. The concept and project was developed in collaboration with water scientists at Aalto University Helsinki and King’s College London.  

Wonderwater Cafés were staged at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki and during Beijing Design Week 2011, the London Design Festival 2012 and Broken Nature the XXII Triennale di Milano in 2019.

Photography Paola Pieroni and Matthew Wei