Everything You Need to Know About Water Footprint in LCA
Did you know that industrial use of freshwater has increased sixfold over the last century, but the amount available for use remains effectively fixed? While desalination is an option, for most purposes, it’s prohibitively expensive and energy-intensive, leaving industry working with the limited freshwater resources available.
As regulatory bodies and legislators around the world wake up to this fact, the rules around water use and the reporting duties placed on businesses become ever stricter. Traditional methods of measuring water use, based on water withdrawals alone, are no longer detailed enough as they don’t incorporate elements like grey water footprints, environmental effects or the full range of impacts across the life cycle of their products and their usage of freshwater resources.
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) based water footprinting dives deeper than previous methods could. Now we can uncover hidden and indirect environmental impacts across the whole life-cycle of a product, from extraction to disposal. Making effective use of these tools is vital for any company which takes its sustainability efforts and regulatory responsibilities seriously.
Here’s how LCA-based water footprinting can help your sustainability team.
Why Are Businesses Seeking Water-Footprinting From Their LCA Software?
Water is a limited resource and with the demands of industry taking more and more of it, regulators are increasingly pushing for stricter accounting when companies undertake their product life cycle inventory efforts. These requirements sit hand in glove with other environmental impact reporting duties, so it makes sense that companies want software that can handle their water footprinting needs alongside the other life-cycle assessments they’re required to undertake.
Traditionally, the metrics which businesses would focus on when looking at their water consumption were simple: how much fresh water was taken. This gives a very macro-level overview of the sustainability implications of a given operation. For a more detailed, and therefore more actionable, set of insights, more nuance is needed.
LCA-based water footprinting gives this detail, weighing up both the amount consumed and the environmental consequences including impacts on ecosystems, freshwater depletion and human health. This approach, often referred to as the Liquid Resource Analysis Framework, allows sustainability teams to glean actionable insights which can be used to find a balance between operational efficiency and minimizing environmental impacts.
This nuance can be tuned to the basin-specific level, allowing detailed measurements of flow requirements, fresh-water availability, water degradation, and regional water stress. This deeper level of data covering the details of water consumption makes meeting environmental targets easier and allows your team to produce more accurate reports.
Essential Features to Evaluate In Water Footprint LCA
Getting the most from LCA-based water footprinting software requires carefully weighing up the features that your team will need. There are a few standout things that most sustainability professionals will appreciate when calculating both carbon footprint and aquatic life cycle impact assessment work:
- Integration With Existing Systems
- Automation of Data Input
- Compatibility with Compliance Reporting (both current and future)
- Ease of Use
- Scalability
Integration with the existing systems around your supply chain means that data can be drawn directly from the source. This real-time monitoring allows your sustainability team and supply chain managers to pinpoint water usage hotspots on the ground and act quickly to reduce the impacts.
Being well integrated with existing systems across your business also allows your water footprint in LCA software to automatically gather and input the required data into your reports. This not only frees up your team from the cumbersome duty of administration, allowing them to focus on implementing new initiatives, but it vastly reduces the risk of human error creeping into your reports.
The regulatory environment is getting ever more stringent, and there are serious consequences for failing to meet the required standards. It’s important to ensure that your LCA water footprinting software (and LCA systems in general) makes staying compliant as simple as possible. Whether it’s ISO 14040, CSRD, or ensuring your EPDs are in order, how your software helps you stay compliant is a key consideration. It’s worth placing a premium on systems that have one eye on the future requirements too.
It’s also important to consider how easy the software is to use. Your sustainability team, supply chain managers, and other stakeholders should ideally be able to glean valuable insights into water usage at a glance through intuitive dashboard displays like those found in Ecochain.
Finally, consider not only your current needs but what you’ll require as your business grows. Look for a service which allows you to scale up or down as required without locking you into cumbersome contracts that may not always meet the needs of your business.
Comparative Analysis of Water Footprint In LCA Software
As regulatory requirements and the desire for environmental transparency have grown, an ecosystem of software services has evolved. Amongst these are four standout packages which can help your enterprise meet its sustainability goals and offer deep insights into your business’s water footprint.
Ecochain
Ecochain aims to offer sustainability teams a balance between detail and usability, standing out for those managing complex supply chains and diverse product ranges in particular. It blends intuitive dashboards, real-time supply chain integrations, and automatic tracking of key metrics. It also backs all this up with extensive support, making adoption as frictionless as possible.
openLCA
Firstly, openLCA is an open-source, free-to-use LCA solution. While it can be a powerful tool in the hands of an expert sustainability professional, it comes with certain limitations which mean that it’s not always the best choice. Firstly, it relies heavily on manual data entry, taking up a lot of time and effort which could be better spent. This also hugely increases the risk of errors finding their way into reports.
As open-source software, it lacks dedicated support, leaving your team at the mercy of internet forums when issues arise. It also suffers from a slightly confusing UI, meaning that teams require a good amount of training before they can make proper use of it.
SimaPro
SimaPro prides itself on its deep scientific modeling and transparent methodology. This means that it can be extensively customized and offer incredibly detailed reports, making it a powerful tool in the right hands. On the other hand, this detail comes at the cost of complexity, meaning that it’s not the most accessible option.
It is, however, ideal for academic researchers and more advanced sustainability consultants who can dedicate the time and resources to getting the most from it.
GaBi
Gabi is targeted directly at larger-scale businesses and those who want expert analysis. It provides a range of options for scenario forecasting and life-cycle costings through its comprehensive databases, including the ability to offer detailed water footprinting. However, this comes at the cost of complexity, meaning that it may overwhelm those who prioritize ease of use.
| Feature | Ecochain Mobius | SimaPro | GaBi | openLCA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | High | Moderate | Low | Low |
| Real-Time Data Integration | ✓ | ✗ | Partial | ✗ |
| Automated Regulatory Compliance (CSRD) | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | ✗ |
| Industry Applications | Manufacturing, Supply Chains | Research, Consulting | Large Enterprises, Expert Analytics | Teams on a budget |
| Onboarding & Support | Extensive | Moderate | Limited | ✗ |
Ecochain: A Leading Alternative For Manufacturers
While Gabi, SimaPro, and even openLCA certainly have their places in the hierarchy of software for producing detailed water footprinting in LCA solutions, Ecochain stands out, especially for those engaged in the manufacturing industry.
Firstly, it prioritizes ease of use. This is evident in every feature: automatic data collection and entry, at-a-glance dashboards which can be read intuitively by all stakeholders, real-time monitoring and extensive support for training and onboarding. These features allow a quick and painless adoption process, freeing your team up from the need for lengthy training processes.
Integration with your business’s existing systems, especially around your supply chain, simplifies data collection, freeing your team from the need to wrestle with complex spreadsheets. It also means that it’s possible to gain real-time insights into water usage and emissions, allowing your sustainability teams and managers to make informed choices and strike a balance between operational and environmental needs.
This integration also streamlines the process of producing regulation-compliant reports significantly. By grabbing data directly from source, many teams have reported a 50% reduction in report writing timescales, freeing them to work on implementing new sustainability strategies. Automating this process also eliminates the chance for user errors to creep in, meaning more accurate compliance reports and less risk.
Best Practices When Implementing Water Footprinting in LCA
Getting the most out of your water footprinting LCA software means paying close attention to the policies your team creates around the process. Here are a few simple actionable tips to help them get the most out of your choice:
Standardize Water Footprinting Data
Your first priority when adopting a new reporting system should be to standardize the data. This means ensuring that all departments are reporting in the same format, saving your sustainability team from having to do complex calculations. Working from the same data-sets allows cross-team collaboration and streamlines the whole process considerably.
In the case of water footprinting, it’s also vital to ensure that your data is location-specific. As aquatic impacts vary hugely from location to location, it’s important to ensure that everything is localized to allow more precise identification of risks and impacts.
Encourage Cross-Team Collaboration
Your sustainability teams don’t work in a vacuum and their work impacts and is impacted by teams across your whole organization. Bring relevant stakeholders in to share insights. A water footprint in LCA solution that emphasizes accessibility like Ecochain is invaluable for this purpose, allowing non-specialists to offer valuable insights that may otherwise be missed.
It’s also worth involving your local community and ensuring that communication is open and transparent with them. This allows your sustainability team to gather real-world insights into your operations impacts.
Run Scenario Analysis
Harnessing your LCA solution’s ability to test the waters before implementing new operational methods means that you can weigh up the environmental impact before the changes take place. Take advantage of this to forecast the impact on compliance with industry-specific regulations. This is good advice when considering any change to your operations and allows you to predict impacts on carbon footprint and carry out modeling using virtual water flows before enacting any changes.
Invest In Training
To get the most out of any given piece of software, it’s worth investing in your team’s training. This is especially true when it comes to complex, technical programs like your chosen LCA solution. Ecochain stands out in this regard with extensive dedicated onboarding support designed to minimize the amount of time this process takes and encourage frictionless adoption.
Real-World Applications of Leading Alternatives for Water Footprinting in LCA
Businesses across every sector are making use of the insights that they get from their LCA solutions, not only in terms of emissions but by running complex aquatic impact analysis to discover where the greatest impacts from their fresh water usage occur.
These insights can be turned into concrete action, reducing environmental impacts on our most precious environments and uncovering surprising chances for efficiencies. For example, many businesses in the car manufacturing industry pivoted to making use of water-reclamation technology and closed-loop systems after detailed water footprint analysis carried out with their LCA solutions uncovered that painting and finishing were using more water than necessary. This not only cut waste in terms of water usage but presented a significant financial saving. They can now offer insights into their ‘grey water footprint’ alongside their usual impact assessment.
Likewise, consumer goods manufacturers have made great use of water footprinting in LCA software to uncover hidden water risks, particularly in sourcing raw materials. Clothing brands, for example, have uncovered cotton growing as a hotspot in their supply chain with agricultural water scarcity arising in more and more locations. Many have now pivoted towards sustainably-grown materials from areas with less risk of water scarcity, reducing their supply chain vulnerability and strengthening customer trust.
Future Trends and Innovations
As the regulatory framework that industry operates in continues to change and consumer expectations around environmental impacts and transparency increase, LCA software, including the parts focusing on water footprints must continue to keep pace.
One area that is proving to be a key battleground is the incorporation of AI analytics. These provide users with at-a-glance insights into their operation’s water usage and allow decision-makers to act quickly and decisively, without the need to wade through complex spreadsheets.
Further enhancing this ease-of-use trend, real-time monitoring allows sustainability teams to glean information as it happens. This means that hotspots can be identified as they occur across the supply chain with pinpoint accuracy. These insights allow sustainability teams to develop new initiatives and find efficiencies to minimize both cost and environmental impact, both in terms of finding methods addressing freshwater scarcity and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Finally, as compliance standards shift to be ever more stringent, the leading LCA solutions are keeping an eye on the future. It’s no longer enough for a software solution to meet current compliance needs, but they must be ready for the next wave before it hits.
Final Words
Integrating water footprint into their Life-cycle analysis efforts provides companies with valuable insights into their freshwater consumption at every stage of their product’s life-cycle, from raw material extraction to disposal.
These insights can then be turned into concrete action, saving both in terms of environmental impact on some of our most sensitive ecosystems and, potentially, in cost. Following the widely adopted AWARE approach allows organizations to optimize their supply chains for sustainability, reduce risk and, crucially, remain compliant with relevant regulations.
Getting the most out of water footprint in LCA tech means weighing up your company’s needs carefully. Prioritize deep insights balanced with ease of use to ensure that you’re not missing any chances for efficiencies.
FAQs on water footprint in LCA
What is the water footprint in a life cycle assessment (LCA)?
The water footprint in a life cycle assessment (LCA) quantifies freshwater consumption and the related environmental impacts of a product through its whole lifecycle – from extraction and production through usage and disposal.
How does the water footprint in LCA differ from traditional water use metrics?
The water footprint in LCA differs from traditional metrics by evaluating not only the amount of water consumed but also the environmental impacts, offering a more detailed sustainability approach that meets ISO guidelines.
What are the key methodologies for calculating the water footprint in LCA?
Key methodologies in calculating water footprint within LCA include midpoint and endpoint analyses which meet ISO 14046 standards, and the widely adopted AWARE method, recognized for its scientific rigor, clarity, and data availability.
Why is evaluating water footprints important for sustainable business practices?
Evaluating water footprints is important because it helps businesses see where water scarcity and pollution risks lie, and supports more sustainable product design, supply chain management, and regulatory compliance, strengthening overall sustainability.
What practical benefits do companies gain by conducting water footprint analyses in LCA?
Companies using water footprint analyses in LCA gain insights into water use hotspots, allowing them to optimize product designs, manage supply chain water risks, ensure regulatory compliance, and enhance transparency with stakeholders.
What challenges are associated with water footprint evaluations in LCA, and how can they be addressed?
The key challenges in water footprint evaluations include data availability, methodological complexity, and difficultly in scaling. These can be mitigated through clear definition of objectives, adopting standardized methods, and ensuring use of precise, high-quality data.
How can water footprint analyses support regulatory compliance and corporate sustainability reporting?
Water footprint analyses support regulatory compliance by generating Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), satisfying ISO 14046 and sustainability reporting frameworks like CSRD.
