- All drinks are mainly water, with either leaves, roasted beans, sugar or fermented stuff added
- Dumping said stuff in water increases the price sometimes by several orders of magnitude
- All of that money could be spent on much more important things, like cake, or perhaps given to charity.
Water vs Coffee Calculations
Envelope calculations (probably all wrong) to try to get a feel for how much money could be saved if everyone just drank water. Obviously this is naïve and doesn’t take into account the supply chain economics, etc.
- Volume of a mug: 0.3459 litres
- Price of tap water (metered): £0.24 $0.36 per litre
- Approx. cost per cup of water: £0.083 $0.127
- Approx. cost per cup of coffee: $1.915 £1.247
- Number of cups of coffee drunk per day: 2.25bn
- Approx. amount spent on coffee each day: $4,308,750,000 £2,805,168,600
- Approx. amount for the same quantity in water: $286,651,921 £186,750,000
Difference (amount that could be given to charity): $4,022,098,079 £2,620,344,611
Sources:
- Price of water: OFWAT
- Mug: Wolfram Alpha
- Coffee per day: The ‘Latte Revolution’? Regulation, Markets and Consumption in the Global Coffee Chain
Thanks to Brennan Novak for finally prompting me to publish this somewhere public.