Posted by Pua Mench, Future 500 Manager for Stakeholder Engagement – Asia

In October I was fortunate to attend a Water Footprint Network (WFN) training course in Beijing, co-hosted by the Beijing Forestry University. I went for many reasons, not least of which is that it’s well documented that we are already facing a global water crisis. I truly believe water will be the environmental issue of our lifetime. As WFN’s aptly points out, “Water has a value but not a cost, it is a free good. This is a disincentive for efficient use. We need to have proper incentives to improve water use and decrease pollution.”

It is still early days for WFN, which was established just over two years ago. But the man behind the organization, Professor Arjen Hoekstra, has been hard at work on the water footprint concept since first introducing it in 2002. Hoekstra’s water footprint breaks from more traditional methods of water accounting in that it takes into account not only the direct water use of a consumer or producer, but also at the indirect water use.

Think of it this way—the amount of water you consumed this morning came not only from showering, brushing your teeth, using water to make a pot of coffee, etc. but also from the amount of water used to produce that coffee that you drank, or even the toothbrush that you used. Considering that the global average water footprint for just one cup of coffee is about 37 gallons, that’s a sizeable water footprint even before stepping out your front door.

On the product side of things, water footprinting is even more revealing, and has huge implications for companies in the business of producing, most anything. In the words of WFN, “The water footprint of a product is the volume of freshwater used to produce the product, measured over the full supply chain [emphasis added].  It is a multi-dimensional indicator, showing water consumption volumes by source and polluted volumes by type of pollution; all components of a total water footprint are specified geographically and temporally.”

According to WFN, many large companies in the beverage sector, for example SABMiller and Coca-cola, have looked at water use in the supply chain. The footprint of a supply chain is much larger than that of operations. Professor Hoekstra notes, “It is a big change for companies to understand this, as well as a big eye-opener.” Traditionally companies have thought about just direct withdrawals, whereas their water footprint has to do with consumptive water use.

I asked Professor Hoekstra if it’s realistic for companies with long and complex supply chains to measure their water footprint. He suggested that large companies should start by identifying a few suppliers with obvious water footprints. “Big companies need to put pressure on their suppliers. For a large company to say that they don’t know who their suppliers are is not an excuse,” said Hoekstra.

In 2009 SABMiller, in cooperation with WFN and World Wide Fund for Nature, became the first company to unveil a detailed corporate water footprint. As with most beverage companies, SABMiller found that the largest part of its water footprint is from crop cultivation, although this varies greatly from country to country, dependent upon water productivity. For example, the water used for agriculture is 150 liters per liter of beer in South Africa but just 55 in Peru. I’ll delve into the concept of water productivity further in a follow-up blog, as it’s central to sustainable water management.

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