Water Footprint

Water footprint measures the amount of water directly and indirectly used to produce each of the goods and services we use. It can be measured for a single process, such as growing rice, for a product, such as a pair of jeans, for the fuel we put in our car, or for an entire multi-national company. The water footprint can also tell us how much water is being consumed by a particular country – or globally – in a specific river basin or from an aquifer. Importantly the footprint concept allows us to estimate water use at different geographical scales and with these estimates of use to different groups. Then a water (and carbon) footprint might be estimated for a person, household, town, region, nation or globally
Having been developed with the involvement of thousands of contributors from around 60 countries and 20 non-governmental organizations, ISO 14046 provides international consensus on a common language for all interested parties, and provides a framework to measure the water footprint.