Water Footprint and Life Cycle Assessment as approaches to assess potential impacts of products on water consumption. Key learning points from pilot studies on tea and margarine

详细信息	查看全文 | 推荐本文 |

• 作者：Donna Jefferies^a ; ^{donna.jefferies@unilever.com} ; Ivan Muñ ; oz^a ; Juliet Hodges^a ; Vanessa J. King^b ; Maite Aldaya^c ; Ali Ertug Ercin^c ; Llorenç ; Milà ; i Canals^a ; Arjen Y. Hoekstra^c
• 关键词：Water Footprint ; Life Cycle Assessment ; Water impact assessment ; Consumer product ; Tea ; Margarine
• 刊名：Journal of Cleaner Production
• 出版年：2012
• 期刊代码：47_09596526
• 类别：ce
• 出版时间：September, 2012
• 卷：33
• 期：Complete
• 页码：155-166
• 文件大小：790 K

摘要

Water accounting and environmental impact assessment across the product's life cycle is gaining prominence. This paper presents two case studies of applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Water Footprint (WF) approaches to tea and margarine. The WF, excluding grey water, of a carton of 50聽g tea is 294聽L green water and 10聽L blue water, and that of a 500聽g tub of margarine is 553聽L green water, 109聽L blue water. The inventory results in the LCA studies (blue water) are 13聽L for tea and 114聽L for margarine. In the impact assessment phase of WF, Coonoor in Southern India appears as a potential hotspot for tea production, although the water consumed in energy to boil the kettle and by the consumer are also significant. For margarine the main potential hotspot is irrigated sunflower around Zaporizhia in Ukraine. The impact assessment results of LCA for tea causes the water in the consumer use phase to be down-weighted and stresses the contribution from Coonoor due to the higher water scarcity of this region. Similarly the LCA impact assessment of margarine causes the palm oil contribution to be down-weighted due to the low water scarcity of Medan in Indonesia. From these case studies we identify similarities, differences and synergies at both the water accounting and impact assessment levels for both approaches with the purpose of improving and advancing the water resource assessment process.