Developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the ISO 14046 standard specifies the principles, requirements and guidelines for water footprint assessment of products, processes and organizations based on life cycle assessment (LCA).
ISO 14046 provides principles, requirements and guidelines for conducting and reporting a water footprint assessment, either as an independent assessment or as part of a more comprehensive environmental assessment.
Only air and soil emissions that affect water quality are included in the assessment and all air and soil emissions are not included. The result of the water footprint assessment is a profile of a single value or impact indicator results.
Sustainability is a priority for consumers, businesses and governments, many of whom are concerned about the excessive demand for limited natural resources and the environmental impacts it causes. They are particularly interested in knowing what measures are being taken to minimize this demand for water and climate change.
Current production and consumption patterns undoubtedly have an impact on the environment, climate change and water resources. Understanding this impact or "footprint" is a vital step towards finding strategies to reduce it. In the case of water, this can be achieved by measuring water use and its impact across the life cycles of products, processes and organisations.
A water footprint is determined by one or more metrics that measure the potential environmental impact of a product, process or organization on water. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) develops the International Standard ISO 14046, Environmental management - Water footprint - Principles, requirements and guidelines that aim to provide decision makers in industry, government and non-governmental organizations with a tool to predict the potential situation.
Recognizing the economic and social benefits that International Standards can bring to commerce, ISO 14046 can have a positive impact by providing a harmonized framework for measuring and reporting water footprints. ISO 14046 has been developed by experts from all over the world, including some of the longstanding liaison organizations in this field.
They acknowledged that building technical capacity to assess the water footprint in developing countries would create competitive market opportunities. As a result, Sweden and Switzerland sponsored training and pilot project development in Africa and Latin America respectively, while training programs were launched in key regional centers such as India, Peru and Botswana in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme. These projects not only succeeded in building capacity in water footprint assessment, but also brought valuable experience to the development of ISO 14046.
While reporting is within the scope of ISO 14046, communicating water footprint results, for example in the form of labels or statements, is outside the scope of ISO 14046.
Among the services provided by our organization within the framework of material testing services, there are also ISO 14046 standard tests.
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