- Weekdays: 9:00 – 18:00
- Birlik 285. Sokak No:6/2 Çankaya/ANKARA
The water footprint of a business is a measure of the total water consumed to produce the goods and services it provides. It refers to the water that goes into the production and manufacture of a product or service and the water used throughout the supply chain as well as during the use of the product.
Understanding your water footprint means understanding where water is important to your business and how it relates to the products you produce.
The water footprint has three components: green, blue and gray. Together, these components provide a comprehensive picture of water use by identifying the source and volume of water consumed, either as rainfall/soil moisture or surface/groundwater, and the freshwater required for the assimilation of pollutants.
The green water footprint is the water from rainfall that is stored in the root zone of the soil and evaporated, transpired or incorporated by plants. It is particularly relevant for agriculture, horticulture and forestry products.
The blue water footprint is water from surface or groundwater sources that is evaporated, incorporated into a crop, or taken from one body of water and returned or returned to another a different time. Irrigated agriculture, industry and domestic water use can each have a blue water footprint.
The gray water footprint is the amount of freshwater needed to assimilate pollutants to meet certain water quality standards. The graywater footprint takes into account point-source pollution discharged into a freshwater source directly from a pipe or indirectly through runoff or seepage from soil, impervious surfaces or other diffuse sources.
A water footprint looks at both the direct and indirect water use of a process, product, company or sector and includes water consumption and pollution throughout the entire production cycle, from the supply chain to the end user.
It is also possible to use the water footprint to measure the amount of water required to produce all the goods and services consumed by an individual or community, a nation or all of humanity. This also includes the direct water footprint, which is the water used directly by the individual(s), and the indirect water footprint – the sum of the water footprints of all products consumed.
Businesses can reduce their operational water footprint by saving water in their own operations and reducing water pollution to zero. Key words: reduce, recycle and treat before disposing. But for most businesses, the supply chain water footprint is much larger than the operations footprint. Therefore, it is crucial that businesses address this as well. Improvements in the supply chain can be harder to achieve – because they are not under direct control – but they can be more effective. Businesses can reduce their supply chain water footprint by entering into supply agreements with their suppliers to certain standards, or simply by switching to the water rail of another supplier. In most cases, it probably means quite a lot, because the whole business model may need to be transformed to include or better control supply chains and make supply chains fully transparent to consumers. Various alternative or complementary tools that can help increase transparency include: setting quantitative water footprint reduction targets, benchmarking, product labeling, certification and water footprint reporting.
This is a question we get from people who are familiar with the idea of carbon offsetting. When it comes to carbon, it doesn’t matter where the mitigation measures are taken, so you can offset your own CO2 emissions by helping to reduce CO2 emissions or by increasing carbon sequestration elsewhere. When it comes to water, this is different, because depletion or contamination of water in one place cannot be offset by any measures elsewhere. The focus should therefore be on reducing its own water footprint and where and when that water footprint is causing problems. We must do everything that is ‘reasonably possible’. Reduce your own water footprint, both directly and indirectly. This applies to both consumers and businesses. Only in the latter case, when everything has been done to reduce their own water footprint, is offset. This means that the residual water footprint is offset by making a ‘reasonable investment’ in establishing or supporting projects that aim to make sustainable, equitable and efficient use of water in the basin where the residual water footprint is located. The terms ‘reasonably possible’ and ‘reasonable investment’ include normative elements that need further quantitative specification and that we need to reach social consensus.
In a world where many products are related to water depletion and pollution, it is very useful to make the history of products more transparent. It is good to have the facts in the public domain, so it is a consumer choice. The information can be provided on a label or made available via the internet. This is most useful for products that often have big impacts on water, such as products containing cotton or sugar. For Consumers it would be useful to integrate a water label into broader labels that also include other topics such as energy and fair trade. The ideal would be a world where we don’t need labels as we can trust that all products meet strict criteria.
