Water Footprinting: How to Address Water Use in Life Cycle Assessment?
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Background
1.2. Terminology
- In-stream freshwater degradative use, e.g., temperature increase of water retained in dams or reservoirs
- In-stream freshwater consumptive use, e.g., additional evaporation of water retained in dams or reservoirs
- Off-stream freshwater degradative use, e.g., increase of biochemical oxygen demand between water catchment and waste water treatment plant effluent
- Off-stream freshwater consumptive use, e.g., the fraction of irrigation water that is evaporated
2. Methods for Accounting and Assessing Water Use in LCA
2.1. Water Inventories
2.2. Virtual Water and Water Footprint According to Hoekstra
2.3. EDIP Resources
2.4. LCIA of Water Consumption by Means of Exergy
2.5. Ecological Scarcity Method
WTA | WTA used for calculation | Weighting factor | |
---|---|---|---|
low | <0.1 | 0.05 | 0.0625 |
2.6. LCIA Method for South Africa
2.7. LCI and LCIA Modeling of Water Use According to Mila i Canals and Colleagues [25]
- Water use leading to insufficient freshwater availability causing impacts on human health
- Fossil and aquifer groundwater use above renewability rate leading to reduced availability of freshwater as a resource for future generations—freshwater depletion (FD)
- Water use leading to insufficient freshwater availability causing effects on ecosystem quality—freshwater ecosystem impacts (FEI)
- Land use changes leading to changes in freshwater availability causing effects on ecosystem quality—freshwater ecosystem impacts (FEI)
2.8. Characterization Method for a New Impact Category ‘Freshwater Deprivation for Human Uses’
2.9. Human Health Damage Assessment of Undernourishment Related to Agricultural Water Scarcity
2.10. Human Health Damage Assessment of Infectious Diseases Arising from Domestic Water Consumption
2.11. Characterization Factors for Assessing the Ecological Damage of Groundwater Extraction
2.12. Damage to Aquatic Ecosystems Caused by Water Use from Dams
2.13. Impact Assessment of Freshwater Consumption According to Pfister and Colleagues [38]
3. Discussion
Method | Type of water use | Type of water | Spatial differen-tiation | Quality differen-tiation | Impact assessment | ISO 14044 [22] compliance of comparative assertions disclosed to the public | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
consumptive | degradative | green | blue | gray | Area of protection | Level in cause-effect-chain | ||||
Water inventories [8,12,13,14,15] | off-stream [8,12,13,14,15] | in-stream [12,13] | - | x | - | x [8,14,15] | x [8,15] | - | - | x |
Virtual water [10], water footprint [11] | off-stream, in-stream | off-stream (gray water) | x | x | x | x [11] | - | ecosystem (gray water) | midpoint (gray water) | x |
EDIP resources [17] | off-stream | - | - | x | - | x | - | resources | midpoint | x |
Exergy [18,19] | off-stream | in-stream (barrage water) | - | x | - | - | - | resources | midpoint | x |
Ecological scarcity method [21] | off-stream | - | - | x | - | x | - | resources | midpoint | - |
Brent [24] | off-stream | off-stream | - | x | - | x | - | ecosystem | midpoint | - |
Mila i Canals et al. [25] | off-stream, in-stream | - | x | x | - | x | - | resources & ecosystem | midpoint | x |
Bayart et al. [28] | off-stream | - | - | x | - | x | x | human health | midpoint | x |
Motoshita et al. [29] (malnutrition) | off-stream | - | - | x | - | x | - | human health | endpoint | x |
Motoshita et al. [32] (infectious diseases) | off-stream | - | - | x | - | x | - | human health | endpoint | x |
van Zelm et al. [33] | off-stream | - | - | x (ground water) | - | x | - | ecosystem | endpoint | x |
Maendly and Humbert [36] | - | in-stream (barrage water) | - | x (barrage water) | - | x | - | ecosystem | endpoint | x |
Pfister et al. [38] | off-stream | - | - | x | - | x | - | resources, ecosystem, human health | midpoint, endpoint | x (only midpoint and non-agregated endpoint results) |
4. Recommendations for Improvement and Development
4.1. Recommendations of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative
- Sufficiency of freshwater resource for contemporary human users
- Sufficiency of freshwater resource for existing ecosystems
- Sustainable freshwater resource basis for future generations and future uses of current generations
4.2. Methodological Gaps and Research Needs
5. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
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Berger, M.; Finkbeiner, M. Water Footprinting: How to Address Water Use in Life Cycle Assessment? Sustainability 2010, 2, 919-944. https://doi.org/10.3390/su2040919
Berger M, Finkbeiner M. Water Footprinting: How to Address Water Use in Life Cycle Assessment? Sustainability. 2010; 2(4):919-944. https://doi.org/10.3390/su2040919
Chicago/Turabian StyleBerger, Markus, and Matthias Finkbeiner. 2010. "Water Footprinting: How to Address Water Use in Life Cycle Assessment?" Sustainability 2, no. 4: 919-944. https://doi.org/10.3390/su2040919