Water Footprint Software

Water Footprint Software supports the systematic collection, modelling, assessment and interpretation of water-related information across a defined product life cycle.

Depending on the assessment goal and methodology, this can include water associated with:

• Raw material extraction and processing
• Components and purchased materials
• Manufacturing activities
• Utilities and production processes
• Supplier operations
• Packaging
• Product use
• Maintenance activities
• Waste treatment and end-of-life processes

The assessment follows the broader LCA structure of goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory, life cycle impact assessment and interpretation. These phases form the core framework established by ISO 14040 and ISO 14044.

The objective is therefore not merely to display total water use. A useful water footprint model should show where water-related impacts occur, which processes contribute most and how geography influences the result.

Two processes can consume the same volume of water while creating very different potential impacts.

Water consumed in an area with relatively high water availability cannot automatically be treated as environmentally equivalent to the same volume consumed in a water-stressed location.

This is why location-sensitive impact assessment is important.

The AWARE methodology — Available WAter REmaining — assesses the potential impacts of water consumption by considering the remaining water available in a watershed after human and ecosystem demand. Factors can vary geographically and temporally.

The European Commission's Environmental Footprint 3.1 method includes Water Use as an environmental impact category and uses the AWARE model for this category.

A water footprint system should therefore maintain the distinction between:

 

Reliable results begin with reliable product information.

A water footprint model should first establish the product, functional or declared unit, system boundary and underlying product structure. ComplyMarket's BOM structure connects Finished Products with Components, Materials and Substances, providing a granular product hierarchy that can be used as the basis for subsequent environmental modelling.

This structure helps avoid treating environmental information as disconnected facility-level data.

For example, manufacturing water consumption needs to be allocated appropriately to the assessed product or declared unit. The supplied ComplyMarket LCA guidance specifically warns against using total facility data without allocating it to the declared unit.

Key Data to Prepare

A practical water footprint assessment may require:

The ComplyMarket LCA manual specifically identifies manufacturing water and wastewater among the data that should be prepared, alongside meter data, utility bills and production records. It also identifies annual water use as relevant use-phase information where applicable.

1. Define the Goal and Scope

Begin by determining why the assessment is being performed.

The purpose may include internal environmental improvement, customer information, product development, a broader LCA, Environmental Product Declaration preparation or another defined sustainability objective.

The selected system boundary — such as cradle-to-gate or cradle-to-grave — determines which processes and life-cycle stages must be modelled.

2. Build the Product and Process Inventory

Connect materials and BOM information with the processes responsible for manufacturing, supplying, using or treating them.

Water should be captured as part of the physical inventory together with relevant energy, materials, emissions, wastes and other flows required by the defined boundary.

The goal is to establish a model that represents the actual product system rather than simply assigning one generic water figure to the finished product.

3. Connect Water Data to Geography

Location is particularly important for water-related impact assessment.

Facility and supplier locations should be recorded at the most useful resolution supported by available evidence. Where regionalised water scarcity assessment is performed, locations should be mapped to the appropriate region or watershed whenever possible.

ComplyMarket's LCA guidance requires exact, approximate and missing locations to be distinguished and recommends disclosure when regional or global fallback factors are required because precise locations are unavailable.

4. Apply an Appropriate LCIA Method

After completion of the life cycle inventory, a compatible Life Cycle Impact Assessment method can be applied.

The ComplyMarket workflow separates the inventory from LCIA and allows the reporting pathway and appropriate method to be selected according to the study goal. Its documented workflow includes the possibility of enabling AWARE/regionalised calculations when suitable location information and compatible factors are available.

This distinction is important: selecting a water assessment methodology cannot compensate for incomplete inventory data or poor geographic information.

5. Identify Water Hotspots

The resulting assessment should help teams determine where water-related impact is concentrated.

Hotspots may occur within a manufacturing process, upstream material, supplier geography, use phase or another part of the product system.

ComplyMarket's documented result workflow supports tracing results to individual processes and reviewing geographic results, which is particularly relevant for regionalised water assessment.

This provides a more useful basis for action than a single company-wide water number.

6. Review Data Quality and Uncertainty

Water footprint results can be sensitive to production data, supplier information, geography and assumptions.

Missing facility locations, estimated production volumes or uncertain supplier information should therefore remain visible rather than being hidden by default values.

Uncertainty analysis can help teams understand whether apparently precise differences between products or scenarios are actually supported by the underlying evidence.

A structured product water footprint can support several business functions.

Sustainability teams can identify water-related environmental hotspots and prioritise areas where better data or improvement measures are required.

Product and engineering teams can assess changes to materials, suppliers, manufacturing processes or product designs within the wider product system.

Procurement and supply-chain teams can investigate whether significant water-related impacts occur upstream and improve supplier data collection where information is incomplete.

LCA and environmental specialists can integrate water assessment into multi-impact LCA rather than evaluating climate change alone.

Reporting teams can maintain supporting methodology, evidence and assumptions for environmental reporting or product-level sustainability information.

Water results should nevertheless be interpreted together with other relevant environmental indicators. Reducing one environmental impact can sometimes increase another, which is one reason multi-category LCA remains important.

For a scalable assessment process:

1. Define the assessment purpose first. Do not select an impact method before establishing the study goal and boundary.
2. Use product-level data where available. Separate facility totals from the quantities attributable to the assessed product.
3. Maintain supplier and facility geography. Water scarcity assessment becomes less representative when locations are missing.
4. Link evidence to the underlying data. Keep meter readings, utility information, supplier declarations and assumptions traceable.
5. Use consistent reference periods and units. Avoid combining datasets from incompatible periods without documenting the limitation.
6. Document assumptions and fallback factors. Estimated or regionalised values should remain identifiable.
7. Review hotspots at process and geographic level. A total result alone provides limited information for improvement.
8. Recalculate when significant product data changes. Material, supplier, factory, process or use-phase changes can alter the result.

ComplyMarket brings water footprint assessment into a structured product and LCA data environment rather than treating it as an isolated spreadsheet calculation.

The documented ComplyMarket LCA workflow follows a granular modelling chain from BOM and material identification through flows, activities, exchanges, foreground processes, product-system construction, LCI, LCIA/regionalisation, uncertainty and reporting.

Businesses can structure products through Finished Products, Components, Materials and Substances and associate supplier, factory and supporting information with the relevant product structure. Supplier questionnaires can also request documents and, where required, factory locations through a map-based field.

For water-related LCA work, the workflow can incorporate manufacturing water and wastewater information, process geography and supporting evidence. Where the selected method and available geographic data permit it, the documented LCA workflow supports AWARE-based regionalised water scarcity assessment. Results can then be reviewed by process and location to help identify meaningful hotspots rather than relying only on aggregated consumption totals.

ComplyMarket also supports model validation, uncertainty configuration, source tracking and structured result views. This helps organisations create a more transparent record of what was assessed, which datasets and methods were used, where assumptions remain and which processes contribute to the result.

For authoritative LCA or EPD results, the supplied ComplyMarket documentation specifies that calculations must be executed using the production calculation environment with the applicable licensed inventory database, calculation engine, compatible LCIA methodology and verified source data; numerical values shown in the standalone demonstration interface are illustrative.

By connecting product structure, supplier information, process data, location-sensitive impact assessment and traceable LCA modelling, ComplyMarket can help businesses build a more systematic and evidence-based approach to understanding and managing product water footprints.