Water Use | UP Scorecard User Guide

Water is a finite and critical resource. It is essential for life (drinking, irrigation), and the economy (energy production, industry). It is therefore critical to quantify water consumption, as an integral part of a comprehensive evaluation of a product's overall sustainability.

The UP Scorecard's Water use metric is a quantitative estimate of the consumptive use of surface and groundwater during the product's life cycle. This is commonly referred to as Blue Water Use, and is expressed in liters of water used.

Overview

Excessive water use can cause ecosystem degradation, including loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, and reduced river flows, which affect aquatic and terrestrial life. LCA quantifies how much water is used in the production, use, and disposal of a product, allowing us to understand the potential for resource depletion, and helps assess the broader environmental effects of water consumption on natural habitats.

Packaging materials

Certain materials and products require large amounts of water during their production processes, particularly in raw material extraction, processing, and manufacturing. This is the case for bio-based plastics, natural fibers, virgin aluminum, and plastics.

Packaging systems

The choice of packaging system also affects the water use of food packaging solutions. For single-use packaging, most of the water is used for the production phase. Reusables, in addition to the water required for production, need to be washed after each use. To minimize the water needed to operate a return-based reuse system, high-efficiency machines and the reuse of washing water can help to minimize water use. Keep in mind that in some geographic areas, water for washing may be a limited resource and result in higher local environmental impacts.

Indicator: Liters of consumed water

To assess water use by the product system, the UP Scorecard makes use of the methodology of the Global Water Footprint Standard (Hoekstra et al., 2011). It computes the “blue water footprint,” which reports the consumptive use of surface and groundwater throughout the product supply chain, including actions that result in the transfer of water between reservoirs. The blue water footprint is reported in units of physical volume of water consumed, and it does not reflect water scarcity or any other spatial or geographic factors of water use. Blue water also excludes natural rainwater for irrigation (“green water”) and ignores the emission of pollutants or contaminants into water (“gray water”). More details are provided in the detailed methodology under Life Cycle Model and Climate Change & Blue Water Use.

The tool calculates the absolute value for water consumption in liters, and a normalized score from 1 to 100 (100 being the best score):

Example scores

The graphic below shows the water consumption impact calculated in the UP Scorecard for disposable plates and trays made of different materials, and a reusable plate used 30 times.