The report is titled "UK Water Footprint: the impact of the UK's food and fiber consumption on global water resources".

According to ENN (Environmental News Network), the report estimated that while each person in the UK drinks, hoses, flushes and washes their way through around 150 liters of mains water a day, they consume about 30 times as much in "virtual" water embedded in food, clothes and other items - the equivalent of about 58 bathtubs full of water every day.

Stuart Orr, WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) - UK's water footprint expert, said that the UK was the sixth largest importer of water in the world.

"Only 38 per cent of the UK's total water use comes from its own rivers, lakes and groundwater reserves," he said. "The rest is taken from water bodies in many countries across the world to irrigate and process food and fiber crops that people in Britain subsequently consume," he added.

"What's particularly worrying is that huge amounts of these products are grown in drier areas of the world where water resources are either already stressed or very likely to become so in the near future," said Orr.