Subject
Water is an essential natural resource.
The issue of water and its management has become increasingly central to the global debate on sustainable development. This interest has been driven by growing water demand, increasing water scarcity in many areas and/or degradation of water quality. This drives the need for a better understanding of water related impacts as a basis for improved water management at local, regional, national and global levels.
It is therefore desirable to have appropriate assessment techniques that can be used in an internationally consistent manner.
One of the techniques being developed for this purpose is the water footprint assessment.
There is a growing demand for assessing and reporting water footprints. Various methodologies exist to do so and currently these methodologies emphasise different aspects related to water. There is therefore a need to ensure consistency in assessing and reporting water footprints.
Applied standards
ISO 14046 provides principles, requirements and guidelines for conducting and reporting a water footprint assessment of products, processes and organizations based on life cycle assessment (LCA).
This International Standard is expected to benefit organizations, governments and other interested parties worldwide by providing transparency, consistency, reproducibility and credibility for assessing and reporting the water footprint of products, processes or organizations.
A water footprint assessment conducted according to this International Standard:
- is based on a life cycle assessment (according to ISO 14044);
- is modular (i.e. the water footprint of different life cycle stages can be summed to represent the water footprint);
- identifies potential environmental impacts related to water;
- includes relevant geographical and temporal dimensions;
- identifies quantity of water use and changes in water quality;
- utilizes hydrological knowledge.
A water footprint assessment can assist in:
- assessing the magnitude of potential environmental impacts related to water;
- identifying opportunities to reduce water related potential environmental impacts associated with products at various stages in their life cycle as well as processes and organizations;
- strategic risk management related to water;
- facilitating water efficiency and optimization of water management at product, process and organizational levels;
- informing decision-makers in industry, government or non-governmental organizations of their potential environmental impacts related to water (e.g. for the purpose of strategic planning, priority setting, product or process design or redesign, decisions about investment of resources);
- providing consistent and reliable information, based on scientific evidence for reporting water footprint results.
A water footprint assessment alone is insufficient to be used to describe the overall potential environmental impacts of products, processes or organizations.
The water footprint assessment according to this International Standard can be conducted and reported as a stand-alone assessment, where only impacts related to water are assessed, or as part of a life cycle assessment, where consideration is given to a comprehensive set of environmental impacts and not only impacts related to water.
In this International Standard, the term “water footprint” is only used when it is the result of an impact assessment.
The specific scope of the water footprint assessment is defined by the users of this International Standard in accordance with its requirements.
Our services
The SSA provides high quality services of Validation and Verification of organisation declaration towards Water footprint of products/services based on ISO 14046.
The service includes a complex of onsite and off-site assessment of data on Water footprint and the way of its calculation. One of the focus area of the assessors is analysis of methodology and tools applied for calculation as well as check of the input data used for calculation including those measured at the enterprise and taken from external expert and public sources.
