Sponge Atlas Illustrates World's Urban Water Use

To help us visualize the world's need for water, Matthew Laws and Hal Watts (with photography by Luke Bennett) illustrated the projected use of urban water in various countries by 2030 with kitchen sponges:

Combining their engineer's precision with creativity honed at the London Royal College of Art, Matt and Hal first designed a world map entirely out of cheap kitchen sponges. They then poured water onto each country in amounts proportional to that its expected urban water consumption in 2030. Elegantly literal, the sponges grow in height according to how thirsty the country will be, generating a stark topography of future needs for urban domestic water.

Core77 has the making-of video clip: Link

"Elegantly literal, the sponges grow in height according to how thirsty the country will be..." Shouldn't thirstier countries be represented by a flatter (drier) sponge? If the sponge is big and puffy, that implies that it's saturated and doesn't need any more water. Far from being elegantly literal, I would say it's actually the opposite: counter-intuitive. Look at how big the US sponge is - we've got all the water we need!

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Craig you're either the perfectly ironic american or a complete idiot...

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Good thing that here in my town, USA, all I have to do to conserve water is to make sure it goes down the drain (I let rain water my yard).

Here, the water I drink and use is taken from a river, cleaned, sent to me via water towers, sent through my drains to a water treatment plant that cleans the water and dumps the clean water back into the same river. Recycling made easy!