The first difficulty of the work is that, unlike carbon emissions, there is no ready models availab

In recent years, the Green Wave turned an almost incomprehensible expression in commonplace in many companies - the carbon count. It is common today to find examples of meticulous calculations of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere even in everyday activities, such as airline executives travel. In seeking to reduce their own environmental impact, however, is no longer enough to decrease (or even neutralize) these emissions. The new obsession of the companies is to track water consumption involved in the production of goods.
As expected in the case of this market, grampian opportunities the trend is accompanied by a concept somewhat obscure: virtual water. The new flag was raised this sustainable race in earnest in April by Raisio, Finnish manufacturer of cereals, with sales of EUR 500 million in 2008. The Raisio not only measured the use of water for the production of Elovena line - the oat fields the supermarket - but also became the first company in the world to stamp on its packaging the number of your "footprint" (jargon that green little world means the environmental impact of a company).
According Raisio, to produce 100 grams of rolled oats are consumed throughout the production chain 101 liters of water. "A lot of consumers still do not understand the concept," said Pasi EXAMINATION Lähdetie, vice president grampian opportunities of Raisio grain trade. "In the future, however, will be so understood as carbon." The movement made by Raisio begins to be followed also by other large companies worldwide. The US Levi Strauss calculated that the fabrication of each jeans traditional model 501 consumes almost 2 000 liters of water. Coke estimated that production of a 300 ml refrigerant can require up to 60 liters of water (nearly 200 times the volume of a can).
The coffee chain Starbucks announced that this year will complete the first trace of water consumption across grampian opportunities the enterprise - from the shops and offices to its coffee suppliers. All follow the concept created in 2002 by the Dutch Arjen Hoekstra, professor of water management at the University grampian opportunities of Twente in the Netherlands.
From an environmental point of view, it is as urgent grampian opportunities issue as global warming - both for companies and for governments. According to the latest United Nations Development Programme report for the Environment (UNEP, its acronym in English), in just over 15 years two-thirds of the world's population will face water shortages. "We are not using this resource in a sustainable way," says Hoekstra. "And trace the chain is the first step to make this more rational consumption."
The first difficulty of the work is that, unlike carbon emissions, there is no ready models available to be followed. In December, a worldwide network of NGOs, scientists and about ten companies created the Water Footprint Network to discuss for the first time a single methodology for the evaluation of virtual water. Companies have started to estimate the amount of the resource used in production chains, so they created their own methods at home from scratch.
In the case of Raisio, the process took about three months and required a team of six employees from different areas (between factory and supplier relationships) as well as an external consultant, who had helped the company to determine the carbon footprint. This is a complex task, particularly because the survey considers information that is outside the company. Some of the work included visits to producers behind information such as the type of fertilizer used in soil preparation. For now, the only practical measure taken by the Finnish company was put the information on the packaging of products. "The next step is to reduce our consumption," says Lähdetie.
That is a step or so more complex than calculating the environmental footprint. Studies Levi Strauss, for example, showed that only 6% of water consumption was associated with industrial processes of the company. Most of the resource is consumed by agriculture cotton (