The World of Water Footprinting Analysis

Water is at the heart of sustainability, but do you know the true impact of your water use?  In our latest episode, we dive into the world of water footprinting analysis, exploring what it is, how it compares to carbon footprinting, and how business can measure, manage and reduce their water impacts across their supply chains and products.

Join our Sustainability experts as they share insights, real-world examples, and why water footprinting is becoming an essential tool for companies navigating climate, ESG, and resource challenges.

Tune in now and discover how smarter water strategies can drive both sustainability and business resilience.

Speakers:

• Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)
• Lara Dresser, Sustainability Consultant – Intertek Assuris

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Transcript

00:16 --> 01:33
 Speaker 1 – Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)

Hello and welcome to this podcast where we're going to be exploring today more around the world of water footprinting analysis. And, this is part of our sustainability series where I'm being joined by experts from our Assuris department who are consulting with our customers on a range of different topics. Now, I'm delighted today to be joined by Lara, actually Dr. Lara Dresser, one of our sustainability consultants in our Assuris department who holds a PhD in biophysics. 

Now, Lara has developed much of her working experience in the life cycle assessment area and GHG accounting, and then specifically working on a number of water footprinting consultations with our customers today. She also champions innovation in her team and is here to talk about an emerging topic, water footprinting. 

So, Lara, thank you so much for joining me today.

01:33 --> 01:35
 Speaker 2 – Lara Dresser, Sustainability Consultant – Intertek Assuris

Thanks, Catherine. It's amazing to be here.

01:35 --> 01:49
 Speaker 1 – Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)

Excellent. So look, I'm going to start off with the basics as usual. Can you tell me what is a water footprint? and how does that differ from a carbon footprint?

01:49 --> 05:00
 Speaker 2 – Lara Dresser, Sustainability Consultant – Intertek Assuris

Yes, of course, Catherine. So, you might think a water footprint is just kind of what you typically collect on in your normal sustainability reporting, how much water do you use? But a water footprint actually goes a little bit further than that. So, it's the total amount of fresh water that's used to make the things that we consume, the things that we use, or if you're talking about a company level, how much fresh water is being used by that whole company. 

So yeah, it goes beyond the normal kind of water that you just see every day, from when you turn on a tap or if you go for a shower, or whatever is used in a business sense as well. But let's for an example, let's just say your morning coffee--it seems like that would only require about 200 or so milliliters of water to actually put in that coffee. But if you think about it on a broader level, you actually need water to be able to even grow those coffee beans. 

There was a study done way back in 2003, so it might have changed a little bit now, but that study actually estimated there's about 140 liters of water that actually needs to go into creating just one cup of coffee. 

So yeah, much broader than just thinking about the water that you can actually see in front of you that you would think goes into a product. So that includes everything from growing the beans, watering those plants, any water that's required to kind of process them, and then also transporting them as well. 

So, comparing it then to a carbon footprint, that's a kind of global impact. You know, it's talking about global warming on a global scale. The difference here with water footprints is obviously you're not looking at emissions to air anymore, you're looking at the water system now rather than the carbon, but also water footprints are quite local. So, you know, if you use a lot of fresh water in a really rainy part of the world that has a lot of access to clean fresh water, that's not going to have the same impact as using that water in a dry kind of drought prone region of the world. So that's the main difference I see with carbon footprints and water footprints you have to look on a much more local level, as well you're also looking at different systems obviously. 

The important thing when you're talking about water footprinting is the context as well. So yeah, with carbon footprint, obviously emissions to air, water footprints, you're looking at how much fresh water you use in the whole life cycle or in your whole supply chain.

05:00 --> 05:30
 Speaker 1 – Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)

Excellent, Claire. Clear. So, just help me understand a little bit more, why are we measuring? I mean, look, I feel like this is a silly question now given the comment you made about how much we spend to make a cup of coffee, tea for me. And by the way, I drink far too much tea, so I've really got to think about this, but why is measuring our water footprint important? Specifically, when we think about it from a, you know, a company's perspective, why is it important?

05:30 --> 07:45
 Speaker 2 – Lara Dresser, Sustainability Consultant – Intertek Assuris

Absolutely. I mean, if you were looking at it on that smaller scale of how much water you're just using every day--I could see why that wouldn't seem too important. You already do that for things like doing a carbon footprint, but there's a real need now to look further than just emissions, there's lots of other systems on Earth that are also being affected by the things that we're doing. So, although there is an absolute abundance of water on Earth, 70% of our Earth's surface is water, not all of that is obviously fresh water that we can drink and use in our processes. So, as you know, a lot of that 70% is our oceans obviously, which is all salt water. So, when we actually look at just fresh water, the fresh water on Earth is really under pressure.

Both the UN and the World Resources Institute both predict by the middle of this century, so by 2050, half the world's population is going to face some kind of level of water scarcity.

We see it on the news all the time, but I'll give a little bit of explanation of what water scarcity is as well. It's where people don't have access to clean, fresh water. So, a water footprint is not just talking about how much fresh water we have, it's also how clean it is as well, so whether we can actually use that water. So, measuring water footprints is going to really help people in the future, I think to point out risks in other systems, in this case the fresh water system, that aren't going to be particularly obvious. I'm sure they're obvious to a lot of people in the world already. There's a lot of regions that are already in that high-risk water scarcity, even places in the UK, but for example, in India some regions have really high water scarcity. So it's a pressing issue and I think it's one that we can see real impacts of.

07:45 --> 08:20
 Speaker 1 – Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)

I fully agree. I mean, look at the the amount of flooding we've had this year in the UK alone, and people sort of think that's because we've got too much water. No, no, no. It's, the problem of the way the climate's changing and how we've got to look at that impact. And it's quite scary. I have a 7 and a 4-year-old, thinking to 2050, that is my children's adult lifetime. That's going to have a major impact on them. So look, what are what are the limitations or challenges in calculating water footprints?

08:20 --> 11:23
 Speaker 2 – Lara Dresser, Sustainability Consultant – Intertek Assuris

Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, I kind of mentioned it before, a little bit. There's a lot of water use that's kind of hidden. So, like I was saying with the cup of coffee, you don't see that 140 litres of water is being used to actually make those. It's finding out how much water is being used, also like I said, not all water use here is equal. So, the important shifts and although we do collect this information for carbon footprints for example, it's really important to collect information on where the water is being used. And, so that can be a big challenge because if it's for example within your supply chain, then it might be difficult to know that. 

There is an element that you need to kind of dig further into supply chains or get in contact with your suppliers and that kind thing to find out, where is this water actually being used? Let's take Canada, for example, where there's a lot less water scarcity. That's very different from a litre of water in, for example, one of the water scarce regions in India.

You need to really make sure that when collecting your data for water footprinting that you know where that water is being used. And you can make assumptions here. It's not as if all of these models you're using for doing these water footprints, just like an LCA or product carbon footprint, they're all models of what's happening. It's just making sure that you're as precise as possible. Another thing that water footprinting in its current state doesn't really take into account, is timing. So for example, if you're taking water out in the dry season, that's going to be far riskier than doing it in in the rainy kind of autumn and winter seasons. At the moment, we don't have the capacity to kind of input that data in. It's kind of an average over the whole year. I think that is that's an important thing as well,. If you put stress on the water system when it's the dry season, then that's going to have a much bigger impact than when there's more water available.

Finally, pollution is also another thing that complicates things further, and I'll touch on this I think later. But, if we return the water that we're using in a different state than how it came to us, which I mean is always going to happen because it's being used, then that pollution, we need to manage that as well. Water footprinting tries to capture that, but again, it's probably something that's going to evolve as we learn a bit more about what that's doing.

11:23 --> 11:52
 Speaker 1 – Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)

Clear. Yeah. And look, I mean, I think this would probably lead on to my next point then in terms of let's bring this to the context of the of the corporate world. So how can businesses ultimately integrate water footprinting into their sustainability strategy, because I think we've made the business case that they should be doing it, but how do they go about that? and what are they thinking about when they set that in there?

11:52 -->13:26
 Speaker 2 – Lara Dresser, Sustainability Consultant – Intertek Assuris

Yeah, absolutely. People and businesses are probably already doing a lot of this hard work. You're already kind of getting in touch with supply chains and finding out information from those kinds of sources, and you're already collecting some of this data from the water that you use in your office. And your production also counts, but I think that little bit of extra work is needed to find out what locations and how much water is being used in the supply chain. So, you really want to map where you think those biggest impacts are going to be, which of your suppliers are using more water than others? And so from there, you can then set targets to help them use less water, help yourselves use less water, maybe just like with energy efficiency, you can also improve efficiency and efficiency of of water use as well. 

Also then like I touched on, just now with the pollution side of things, how can you reduce that? and how can you at least monitor it? And so yeah, it's all about working with suppliers in those regions that you've Identified as kind of high stress, water stressed regions, and making sure that they're aware of all of these impacts that they might be having and work with them to reduce that that water footprint.

13:26 --> 14:05
 Speaker 1 – Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)

Clear, clear. I mean, I think a lot of consultation is probably needed on that side of things with companies. 

My 7-year-old came home and said this to me the other day, she said, “Mom, have you heard of blue water or green water or grey water?” And I quickly went off to the side to Google what it meant myself. So what does this mean? and why does it matter? Because if my 7-year old's talking about it, we as business leaders should be talking about it. So, what's the difference?

14:05 --> 17:02
 Speaker 2 – Lara Dresser, Sustainability Consultant – Intertek Assuris

Absolutely, yeah. So, quite important distinctions here. These are different types of water that come from different places.

When we talk about a water footprint, it's typically not just a single number that we're looking at. It's made-up of these three parts: blue, green and grey water. 

So, starting off with the blue water, this is the fresh water from rivers, lakes and any underground sources, any of that kind of thing, that we use directly. So, that could be for irrigation or industrial processes, that kind of thing. 

Then green water is your rain water the crops rely on. So, water that's being used to grow crops. Any water that's stored in the soil and used by plants, and that might not be applicable to all companies, but it is still very important. 

And then finally, grey water that is defined in slightly a different way. It's more about the pollution that's associated with manufacturing or production. So, it's defined as the fresh water needed to dilute any pollution, so that it doesn't harm the environment when it's released back into the natural environment. It's really an indicator of pollution, and the amount of pollution that's associated with a manufacturing process for example. So, it's quite important to understand these distinctions, I think, if you're going to try and start undergoing a water footprint, because this could be really important for identifying your hotspots within your water footprint. So, it might be that you're actually not that dependent on blue water, for example.  Let's say you're growing cotton or something like that, a lot of your water use is green water, but actually in your manufacturing process there's quite a lot of runoffs or something like that, so you might have a lot of grey water. So it really helps to, I think, identify hotspots and again really look at what's the impact on drought prone areas, versus areas that have got much more plentiful water.

So as a recap, blue water is your normal fresh water from rivers, lakes and that kind of thing. Green water is rainwater, and grey water really reminds us of not just how much water we use, but also how clean we leave it afterwards--so it's about pollution.

17:02 --> 17:24
 Speaker 1 – Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)

Clear, clear. And I certainly get more educated on that point now. So, look, I mean, last question from me, please, Lara, looking ahead, how do you think ultimately the water footprinting will evolve? How's it going to look for businesses? And what benefit will we see from it?

17:24 --> 18:54
 Speaker 2 – Lara Dresser, Sustainability Consultant – Intertek Assuris

Yeah, amazing question. Thank you, Catherine. I see a few shifts here. I think technology is probably going to be able to give us better data on this. Like I said before, there's a few limitations to water footprint at the moment, but we've got loads of technology out there that could really help us to track water use a bit more precisely. So, I'm hoping that could give us better data. I think the policies on this kind of thing will tighten up as well. There's a lot of investors, and governments are also waking up to this issue as well and asking companies to kind of disclose how are they going to manage this this water risk and so I wouldn't be surprised if we see a similar kind of development to carbon footprinting where alongside your carbon footprint you'll also start seeing a water footprint on like a label on products, maybe for example. 

So, climate change is making, like you said, droughts and floods more extreme, I think this water footprinting will move from being a nice to have kind of tool to something that is really kind of essential for climate resilience for companies. So, that's where I see it going.

18:54 --> 21:40
 Speaker 1 – Catherine Beare, Regional Director - Business Assurance (UK & Iberia)

Wow, well said and really good point on that because this is where we are. It is climate resilience and that is how our Corporates that we work with, our customers that we work with, want to be educated on how they see that evolving so that they can be prepared and have their business modeling prepared accordingly. 

Lara, that that was absolutely brilliant, very interesting podcast indeed.

Fantastic information that you gave us today. So, thank you so much for your time today. You certainly give us, you certainly give us a lot of food for thought there in terms of how we understand water footprinting, what could be the suggested next steps in thinking about it, and of course most importantly what the business case is. Thank you.

Now as a reminder, here's how Intertek can help you with your sustainability needs. Firstly, on what we've just talked about today, we're here to help provide you with some consultation and development of either a company water footprinting or product level water footprinting analysis. 

Secondly, remember we also can help you with development of your GHG inventory services. We can conduct your greenhouse gas inventory and perform the calculations so that you know what your GHG starting point is and you'll have a good understanding of that process from listening and to some of our earlier podcasts. 

Thirdly, GHG and ESG assurance. We can perform your greenhouse gas and ESG assurance and sustainability reporting needs. So, disclosures we ultimately can help with. And finally your CDP questionnaire assistance. We can help you with your CDP reporting by giving you detailed assistance on the CDP questionnaire.

Now for more information, please do go and visit our website at: www.intertek.com/assuris/sustainability . 

So that does conclude today's podcast. Lara, once again, thank you so much. Really excellent set of information and very clearly delivered. So, listeners, please do watch out for future episodes.

And from the assurance team here at Intertek, we're here to help you on your sustainability journey. Until next time, goodbye.