Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Introduction of a feasible performance indicator for corporate water

accounting e a case study on the cotton textile chain
Bettina Joa a, Heidi Hottenroth a, *, Norbert Jungmichel b, Mario Schmidt a
a
b

Institute for Industrial Ecology, Pforzheim University, Tiefenbronner Strasse 65, DE-75175 Pforzheim, Germany
Systain Consulting GmbH, Spaldingsstrae 218, DE-20097 Hamburg, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 2 August 2013
Received in revised form
18 June 2014
Accepted 25 June 2014
Available online 3 July 2014

Due to a growing public interest in increasing water consumption and associated water scarcity, many
methods and indicators for measuring and assessing freshwater usage have evolved. However, what is
still missing is a low-effort approach for corporate water accounting along entire supply chains that
provides valuable decision-making aid for companies seeking to improve sustainable water management
along their value chain. This paper introduces a new method for corporate water accounting, the
Regionalized Cumulative Water Intensity (RCWI), and investigates its practical applicability through a
case study in the cotton textile chain. The results of this case study show that the concept is suitable for
assessing and comparing the water performance of different suppliers and supplier combinations
whereby not only environmental and economic but also social aspects can be considered. Moreover, the
indirect responsibility that a company bears for the water use of its suppliers is reected in its own water
performance results. Through purchasing less, more or other pre-products as well as through deliberate
supplier selection a company has a non-negligible inuence on this.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
RCWI
Corporate water accounting
Water efciency
Supply chain management
Cotton textile chain

1. Introduction
Freshwater is an indispensable and irreplaceable natural
resource, but due to rising demand, overexploitation and pollution,
it becomes increasingly scarce in a growing number of regions. That
causes complex environmental, social, economic and political
challenges (World Water Assessment Programme, 2012). To mitigate those water-related problems, companies need to gain more
knowledge about water use along their supply chains and their
products' life cycles which requires an appropriate corporate water
accounting method.
Concerning this matter, two parallel developments have been
observed in the last few years: Water use and its related impacts
play an increasingly large role in the life cycle assessment (LCA) of
products and many current LCA studies deal with the different
methodologies for water accounting and impact assessment
(Bayart et al., 2010). At the same time, water resource managers
started focusing on entire supply chains and on issues of freshwater
allocation by conducting comprehensive Water Footprint Assessments (WFA) (Hoekstra et al., 2011).

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 49 7231 28 6403; fax: 49 7231 28 7403.

E-mail address: heidi.hottenroth@hs-pforzheim.de (H. Hottenroth).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.06.075
0959-6526/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Since LCA aims at assessing all potential environmental impacts

of a product, water-related impacts are only one part of the
assessment. Thereby water use both on the input and output side of
the considered product system is taken into account and assigned
to different impact categories. However, so far there has neither
been developed a standardized procedure for the inventory nor
for the impact assessment of water use in LCA. Accordingly, the
existing methods show some signicant differences. This relates in
particular for the impact assessment, as various impact categories
and three different areas of protection are considered and recorded
by means of several indicators (Kounina et al., 2013).
Complementary to LCA, the WFA methodology was developed
to support sustainable and efcient water management and focuses
mainly on quantitative indicators in the inventory phase while no
cause-effect chains are elaborated (Boulay et al., 2013).
A closer look at the water assessment studies conducted during
the last few years reveals, that there are numerous detailed investigations with some signicant results for individual products.
van Hoof et al. (2013) conducted a life-cycle-based water
assessment of a hand dishwashing product, applying various water
assessment methods and analyzing their individual challenges,
strengths and weaknesses. Jeswani and Azapagic (2011) review
different methodologies through a case study on corn-derived
ethanol produced in 12 countries. Their work shows how different

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B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

characterization factors for assessing the impacts of water consumption at varying spatial levels can lead to diverse results.
Jefferies et al. (2012) compared the LCA and WFA approach in two
case studies on margarine and tea and identied several differences
in scope and focus of both methods. Zonderland-Thomassen and
Ledgard (2012) analyzed dairy farming systems in two different
regions in New Zealand and thereby illustrated the discrepancies in
water footprint methods.
All of these papers agree that each method faces the same tradeoff between achieving a high spatial level of detail, which is very
data demanding, and being practically applicable, especially when
it comes to assessing complex worldwide supply chains. In practice,
many companies encounter major problems when trying to calculate
water footprints including aspects of upstream water use, because
of the large amount of data that has to be collected from all suppliers throughout the entire value chain. Most water footprint
studies solve this problem by using standard or generic data which
can be determined quite easily but do not reect the real situation.
This is especially problematic when water footprints shall provide
decision-making aid for companies aiming to improve sustainable
water management along their supply chains. For this reason van
Hoof et al. (2013) recommend to emphasize collection of representative high-quality data, especially when considering water
accounting from a practitioner's perspective.
While already a lot of research focused on quantifying water
footprints and rening water use assessment in LCA (Berger and
Finkbeiner, 2010), a comprehensive critical review, elaborated by
Chenoweth et al. (2013), shows that yet no consensus has been
achieved neither on a methodological standard for water footprinting nor on the purpose behind water footprinting. What is still
lacking is a viable and decision-supporting method that integrates
the aspects of water use and water scarcity along the entire supply
chain and allows comparing the water performance of different
companies, sites and industries. Therefore this paper presents a
low-effort approach for corporate water accounting that overcomes
those shortcomings. The concept of Regionalized Cumulative Water
Intensity (RCWI) works with real data rather than generic values
and thus allows a realistic analysis of corporate water use (Joa and
Hottenroth, 2012). To investigate the practical applicability of the
method, a case study within the cotton textile chain has been
conducted and the use of RCWIs in corporate decision-making was
analyzed.
2. The method of Regionalized Cumulative Water Intensity
(RCWI)
This section introduces the method and the procedure for
calculating Regionalized Cumulative Water Intensities.
2.1. Scope of the method
Concerning existing water accounting methods, there is still a
huge gap between methodology and practical applicability and
therefore a need for more practicable water footprint methods
(Berger and Finkbeiner, 2012). Thus, the main objective of the
concept of RCWI is to achieve high practicability and to enable
companies to determine the freshwater use of their own operations
and in their supply chains at reasonable effort. Following the
concept of cumulative eco-intensities (Schmidt and Schwegler,
2008) with which environmental indicators are related to the
added value, the RCWI integrates a monetary reference value and
relates the volume of water a company withdraws to its economic
benet. To reduce the expenditure for data collection, water use is
determined recursively from stage to stage by passing on the data
just to the next actor in the chain. Furthermore, to include the

different local water contexts of global operation sites, water

withdrawals are weighted on each value chain stage according to
the prevailing hydrological water availability.
2.2. How to calculate RCWIs
The RCWI, which is referred to as qr, sets the regional weighted
volume of water withdrawals in relation to the value of manufactured products, which in the simplest case is made up of the price
(p) and the quantity (q). For regionalization the Water Stress Index
(WSI) developed by (Pster et al., 2009) was selected as regional
weighting factor (r). The main reason for this choice was the WSI's
high spatial resolution of 0.5 , which is necessary since water scarcity
is most often a very local problem (World Water Assessment
Programme, 2012) and the RCWI aims at a site-specic water use
assessment. Furthermore the WSI, which is based on the withdrawalto-availability (WTA) ratio, has the advantage of taking into account
monthly and annual variability of precipitation as well as the effects
of strongly regulated ows. Its values range from 0. 01 (no water
stress) to 1 (extreme water stress) and can be easily determined
with the help of a downloadable Google Earth layer (Pster, 2009).
By multiplying the volume of water withdrawals (W) with the sitespecic WSI one obtains regionalized water withdrawals in a water
stress equivalent unit (m3-equivalents).
If no pre-inputs have to be deducted, company 1 can calculate its
RCWI by just dividing its regionalized water withdrawals (r1W1) by
its turnover T1, which, in this simple case, is just the product of p1
and q1 (Equation (1)). Thus, the RCWI indicates how many m3eq of
water were withdrawn to create an added value of $ 1 or V 1
whereupon withdrawing 1 m3 of water per V in regions affected by
severe water scarcity will lead to a higher RCWI than withdrawing
the same volume in an area where water is abundant.

qr1

r1 $W1 r1 $W1

T1
p1 $q1

(1)

Taking a value chain perspective, the so called ecological

backpacks of all products a company purchases must be considered. In the case of corporate water accounting this means, the
water backpacks of the pre-products must be included into the
ratio of RCWI because as soon as a company purchases products, it
also becomes responsible for the negative impacts on water resources that occurred when these products were produced.
In a simplied value chain (see Fig. 1) this indirect water use can
be included into the RCWI of company 2 (qr2) by multiplying the
price (p1) and the quantity (q1) of the purchased product with the
RCWI of company 1 (qr1) and by adding this term to the regionalized
water withdrawal (r2W2) of company 2 that stands in the numerator. For calculating the denominator the value added by company
2, which represents the economic benet for its direct water use,
and the value of the pre-products (p1q1), which corresponds to the
indirect water use, must be summed up. However, since the value
added by company 2 results from the difference of its own turnover
and the costs of the pre-product (T2p1q1), the two terms in the

Fig. 1. A simplied value chain with one supplier (Company 1) and its customer
(Company 2).

B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

denominator cancel each other out and for the RCWI, only the ratio
of regionalized cumulative water withdrawals and the turnover of
company 2 remains:

qr2

r2 $W2 qr1 $p1 $q1 

r $W2 qr1 $p1 $q1 
2
T2  p1 $q1 p1 $q1 
T2

(2)

If there is more than one customer, the water used by the supplier must be allocated to its different customers (see Fig. 2).
Within the method of RCWI allocation is done on an economic
basis. This means, the indirect water use is assigned to the customers analogous to the delivery quantities and prices of the preproducts by multiplying the supplier's water intensity (qr1) with
the costs of the supplies:

qr2

r $W2 qr1 $p1/2 $q1/2 

2
T2

(3)

r3 $W3 qr1 $p1/3 $q1/3 

T3

(4)

qr3

2
14
r $Wi
qri
Ti i

X
j2fSupplierig

qrj $

waste it produces (Schmidt and Schwegler, 2008). For a comprehensive water use assessment this means that not only the upstream but also the downstream water use of the waste disposal
chain must be included into the RCWI. Following the same principle
as within the supply chain, RCWIs are passed on recursively from
stage to stage along the waste disposal chain. The reporting company needs to know the RCWIs of its direct disposal contractors and
the costs paid for the disposal processes. With this information it
can easily include indirect water use through waste disposal into its
RCWI:

2
14
r $Wi
qri
Ti i

X
j2fSupplierig

X
j2fDisposerig

whereby p1>2 stands for the price and q1>2 stands for the
quantity of the product, being delivered from company 1 to company 2.
To determine the RCWI for a comprehensive value chain with
any number of suppliers (j) and pre-products (k), the reporting
company i needs to know its own regionalized water withdrawals
(riWi), the prices and quantities of its purchased products and the
RCWIs of its direct suppliers. When summing up across all suppliers
j (including their qrj) and all products k that company i purchases
from supplier j, the general formula reads as follows:

3
pjik $qjik 5

(5)

k2fSuppliesj/ig

where qjik is the quantity and pjik is the price of product k that
company i purchases from supplier j.
The RCWI of the 1st tier supplier already includes the water
backpacks of all suppliers from further upstream as the indirect
water use from purchased goods is determined recursively from
stage to stage by passing on the data just to the next actor in the
chain. By including the RCWI of every supplier, the water backpacks of all pre-products are considered (Joa and Hottenroth,
2012).
A company's cumulative eco-intensity shall include all of its
direct and indirect impacts, including the products it uses and the

Fig. 2. A value chain with two customers.

145

qrj $

qrj $

G
pG
jik $qjik

k2fSuppliesj/ig

pBjik $qBjik 5

(6)

k2fDisposalsj/ig

where qBjik is the quantity of waste k (bad) being delivered from

company i to disposer j, pBjik is the disposal price, qG
is the quantity
jik
and pG
is
the
price
of
pre-product
k
(good)
being
delivered
from
jik
supplier j to company i.
To make this recursive calculation system work, in the end,
every company passes on its own RCWI to its customers to whom it
delivers products or from whom it receives wastes (see Fig. 3).
3. Case study: Regionalized Cumulative Water Intensities
within the cotton textile chain
To investigate the practicability of the RCWI the concept has
been applied to the cotton textile production chain. Considering the
typical textile value chain stages, RCWIs have been calculated for
several scenarios. In order to map the regional differences of the
resource availability, production sites in Bangladesh as well as in
Turkey have been studied. Necessary data were provided by Systain
Consulting GmbH who requested primary data from all considered
production sites. To keep the condentiality of the retailer and its
suppliers, data have been anonymised and lightly modied.
3.1. Water use in the cotton textile chain
3.1.1. Water accounting in the cotton textile industry
The cotton textile industry has already been the subject of a few
water footprint and water accounting studies.
Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2011) quantied a global average
water footprint of cotton lint, which adds up to 5163, 2955, and
996 m3/t for green, blue, and grey water, respectively, whereas in a
previous paper, Chapagain et al. (2006) estimated a global average
of 4264, 4242, and 622 m3/t for green, blue, and grey water,
respectively. In addition to this global view, the latter also calculated water footprints of cotton products at different stages of
production for the 15 largest cotton-producing countries at state
level.
While both of these studies draw on generic and modelled data
on a highly aggregated level, Wang et al. (2013) use primary data to
calculate an industrial water footprint of seven kinds of knitted
fabrics, revealing that the gray water footprint makes up the largest
share. However, considering the extensive criticism on the concept
of the gray water footprint (i.a. Gawel and Bernsen (2011);
Morrison et al. (2010); Jeswani and Azapagic (2011)), the signicance of the results is doubtful, in particular for corporate decision
making in water management.
Chico et al. (2013) use spatially explicit data, mainly from primary sources, to evaluate the water footprint of a pair of jeans.
Thereby also the inuence of cotton prices and agricultural policies

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B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

Fig. 3. Passing on RCWIs along the supply and waste disposal chain.

on the sustainability of the specic consumer product was analyzed.

The results of this case study show that water use in Spanish
agricultural cotton production is heavily interrelated with price
incentives and public policies: Water efciency increases with production intensity, which in turn depends on raw cotton prices. Thus,
Chico et al. (2013) come to the conclusion that monetary incentives
play an important role for the water use of a specic production
system, which makes it crucial to take into account the socioeconomic context when trying to improve water management.
Above all these ndings conrm that the concept of cumulative
eco-intensities can be indeed very well transferred to water accounting, since Schmidt and Schwegler (2008) likewise argue that
the economic environment of the product can't be completely
disregarded. At least that is why their approach relates environmental expenditures to the added value of economic activities.
Another study, which also deals with the economic context of
water use in production systems, was conducted by Rudenko et al.
(2013) and focuses on the micro- and macroeconomic analysis of
cotton production in Uzbekistan. In this study, a water footprint
value index was calculated as the ratio of value added to water
footprint of a product. Thereby the authors come to the conclusion
that the combination of economic based value chain and ecological
based water footprint analysis gave an added value for betterinformed decision-making in water management. The results of this
case study show that increasing water use efciency and reducing the
water-intensive raw cotton production while manufacturing (cotton)
products with higher value added will reduce water-related risks of
the Uzbek economy.
The RCWI method, which will be road-tested in the following
case study, follows a similar approach as Rudenko et al. (2013).
However, while the latter are only calculating the added values per
water footprint at several stages of the cotton production chain, the
RCWI adds up the ecological expenditures in terms of water use
along the entire supply chain and attributes them to the economic
results of the company. This in turn allows not only to track the
water performance of the same enterprise over time, but also to
compare different companies with diverse product portfolios and
levels of vertical integration.
3.1.2. Cotton cultivation
Cotton is mainly grown in tropical and subtropical climates.
Depending on the place of cultivation and the climatic condition,
variables like the yield per hectare, the degree of mechanization

and the necessary amount of irrigation can vary considerably.

While cotton cultivation in Asia is characterized by low machine
use and hand picking, in the United States and the countries of
the former Soviet Union cotton is grown in intensive industrial
agriculture with high machine use. Besides the degree of automation one must also distinguish between rainfed and irrigated
agriculture. In 1999 about 50% of the area planted with cotton was
irrigated, the proportion of irrigated cotton yield was even at about
70% due to higher productivity in irrigated agriculture (Soth et al.,
1999). Since agricultural mechanization has increased, while
droughts in cotton cultivation areas became more frequent, it can
be assumed that nowadays the global share of irrigated cultivation
is even higher. So in terms of water related impacts of the cotton
textile chain, irrigated cotton cultivation is usually the most relevant value chain stage.
3.1.3. Textile manufacturing chain
The case study considers the typical value chain stages of textile
manufacturing: spinning, dyeing and garment making. Since fabric
production (knitting and weaving) mostly takes place in the dyeing
or garment units, its water use is included in those units and was
not accounted for separately.
During spinning, water is primarily used for cooling of machinery and for ventilation and evaporation. In some mills bres are
cleaned before the actual spinning process takes place, which can
lead to additional water withdrawals (Wiegmann, 2002). Finishing
is the most water-intensive stage of the textile manufacturing chain,
since bleaching, dyeing and washing are carried out in an aqueous
medium. During garment making (cutting, sewing, stitching) water
use is usually only needed for steam ironing.
Fig. 4 shows the scheme of a typical textile production chain
with all the value chain stages that have been considered in the
case study.
3.2. Data
3.2.1. Cotton cultivation and ginning
The raw material acquisition and pre-processing stage includes
the agricultural cultivation of cotton, the harvesting and the
extraction of cotton bres from cotton seeds (cotton ginning). Since
the considered spinning mills purchase cotton bres from different
countries and from changing suppliers, no primary data could be
obtained for these rst stages of the textile value chain. Instead,

B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

147

^te-Kommission des 12. Dt. Bundestages, 1993).

Fig. 4. Textile production chain with value chain stages considered in the case study (modied from Enque

three scenarios for different cotton cultivation areas were modelled

using generic data (Table 1).
The base scenario uses generic data for cotton production in the
USA and can be considered as a realistic estimation, since it is
known that the observed spinning mills purchase cotton from the
USA amongst others. Furthermore, the irrigation amount in US
cotton production roughly equals to the global average irrigation
amount in cotton cultivation so that the results of this base scenario
can also be seen as a global average assessment. Besides the base
scenario, a best and worst case scenario with cotton from Brazil
(BRA) and cotton from Turkmenistan (TURKM) were modelled.
These are currently the cotton growing countries with the global
minimum and maximum irrigation amount per yield. If cotton is
grown in rainfed agriculture where no irrigation at all takes place,
the rst value chain stage will be omitted when calculating the
RCWI since water withdrawals are zero. Therefore this actual bestcase scenario was not considered in the case study.

Table 1
Secondary data on blue water footprints of cotton lint.
Country

m3 water/t
cotton lint

Turkmenistan
USA
Brazil
Global average

13,077
2920
107
2955

Global average

2740

Reference
year
1997e2001
2005/2008
1997e2001
1996e2005
s.a.

Source
(Chapagain et al., 2006)
(Pster, 2011)
(Chapagain et al., 2006)
(Mekonnen and
Hoekstra, 2011)
(Cotton Incorporated, 2012)

3.2.2. Textile manufacturing chain

In contrast to the cotton cultivation stage, all other value chain
stages could be modelled with primary data. In order to map the
regional aspects of resource availability, textile manufacturing in
Bangladesh and Turkey was exemplarily analyzed and compared.
Thereby the business units of the textile manufacturing chain
(spinning, dyeing and garment) shown in Table 2 were considered.
For these different units, the water withdrawals and turnovers
displayed in Table 3 were measured or estimated.
For regionalization of water withdrawals, the WSI was determined for all considered sites (Table 4).
To calculate the economic part of the RCWI, the quantities and
prices of the purchased pre-products had to be determined. According to experience, the willingness of suppliers to disclose
economic data was very low. Thus in some cases it was necessary to
use empirical values and estimates to determine the economic
variables of the ratio.

Table 2
Business units at different stages of the textile manufacturing chain.
Turkey

Bangladesh

Short name

Value chain stages

Short name

Value chain stages

Spin T1
Dye T1
Dye T2
Dye T3
Garm T1

Spinning
Dyeing
Dyeing
Dyeing
Garment

Spin B1
Dye B1
Garm B1
Garm B2

Spinning
Dyeing
Garment
Garment

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B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

Table 3
Water withdrawals and turnovers of the considered business units.

Table 4
Water Stress Indices for the considered sites (Pster, 2009).

3.3. Results
3.3.1. RWI e regionalized water intensities
First of all, the (none cumulated) water intensities (WI) were
calculated for every business unit using the sales gures and volumes of water withdrawals displayed in Table 3. For regionalization
the values of the WSI, displayed in Table 4 were used. Table 5 shows
the WIs and RWIs for all considered value chain stages and business
units.
As expected, the water intensities at the water intensive stages
of the value chain exceed the intensities of the other stages
considerably. At the same time, the none cumulated results already
show the impact of the regionalization: The low values of the WSI
for the Bangladeshi sites have a very positive effect on the ratio
when it comes to weighting of water intensities so that the business
units operating in Bangladesh show a better water performance
than those operating in Turkey. This becomes particularly evident
when looking at the results for Garm B1 and Garm B2: Their WIs are
worse than those of their Turkish competitor, but they perform
signicantly better when taking into account the regionalized

Table 5
Water Intensities and Regionalized Water Intensities of the considered business
units.
Value chain stage

Country

Cotton cultivation and

ginning

Brazil
Cotton BRA
67
USA
Cotton USA 1833
Turkmenistan Cotton
8209
TURKM
Turkey
Spin T1
1.8
Bangladesh
Spin B1
4.5
Turkey
Dye T1
97
Turkey
Dye T2
63
Turkey
Dye T3
28
Bangladesh
Dye B1
27
Turkey
Garm T1
0.18
Bangladesh
Garm B1
0.31
Bangladesh
Garm B2
0.98

Spinning
Dyeing

Garment

Short name WI [l/

US$]

WSI

RWI [leq/
US$]

0.01
1
0.77
1411
0.8589 7051
0.1259
0.0142
0.692
0.692
0.692
0.0142
0.9994
0.0142
0.0142

0.23
0.064
67
44
19
0.38
0.18
0.0044
0.014

B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

l/US$
200

149

Relave Water Withdrawal and Water Intensity

l/kg

215

120
97

150

100
125

80

63

60

84

100

70
40

28

27
50

29
4.5

10

4.0 1.8

20
1.0

4.2 0.2

1.0 0.3
0

0
Dye T1

Dye B1

Dye T2

Dye T3

Spin B1

Spin T1

Relave Water Withdrawal [l/kg]

Garm B2 Garm T1 Garm B1

Water Intensity [l/US$]

Fig. 5. Comparison of relative water withdrawals and water intensities.

Table 6
RCWI of Garm T1, Garm B1 and Garm B2 for different supplier combinations (cotton from the USA).
Cotton from the USA (Base scenario)
Supplier combination
Cotton USA

Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin

T1
T1
B1
T1
B1
B1
T1
B1

Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye

T2
T1
T2
T3
T1
T3
B1
B1

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garm T1

1348
1012
820
742
621
451
273
165

Garm B1

908
682
553
500
419
304
184
111

Garm B2

1461
1097
890
804
674
489
296
179

values (RWIs). The same effect applies to Spin B1 and Dye B1, who
perform better than the Turkish companies due to the water stress
at the Turkish operation sites.
3.3.2. RCWI e Regionalized Cumulative Water Intensities
To take into account the entire supply chain water use,
Regionalized Cumulative Water Intensities were calculated for the
three considered garment manufacturers. Thereby different supplier combinations were modelled, assuming that the focal companies (Garm T1, Garm B1, Garm B2) in each case can select
between the various dyeing and spinning units. Furthermore, each
value chain was modelled with cotton from the three different
cultivation areas (United States, Brazil and Turkmenistan) to show
the impact of the cotton-growing region, the local water availability
and the prevailing irrigation practices on the RCWI of the focal
company.
3.3.3. Sensitivities
Regardless of the effects of regionalization, some units of the
same value chain stage show considerable differences in their
water intensities. Within the cultivation stage this is of course due
to different irrigation amounts. For the dyeing units it can be
explained by the various dyeing methods and in particular by the
different ages of the plants whose technical levels vary greatly.
Above all, some of the underlying data are only empirical values
and estimates. Thus, to check the resilience of the results, a comparison of (none cumulated) water intensities and mass based
water withdrawals was conducted.
Fig. 5 shows again considerable differences for the dyeing units.
The low water intensity of Dye B1 compared to its relative water
withdrawal can be justied by the high value creation of this
company, whose products are in the upper price range. In contrast,
Dye T2's mass based water withdrawals are less, but this company

operates at a much lower price level, which also leads to the difference in water intensities compared to Dye T3.
These sensitivities show that data collected for the calculation of
the RCWI must be checked carefully for quality and consistency,
especially if the RCWI is passed on independently from supplier to
supplier.
3.3.4. Interpretation of results
3.3.4.1. Base scenario (Cotton from the USA). Table 6 shows the
impact of the supply chain's water use on the RCWI of the garment
manufacturers Garm T1, Garm B1 and Garm B2. While the (none
cumulated) RWI of Garm B2 is better than the RWI of Garm T1 (cf.
Table 5), the integration of the supply chain's water use in the RCWI
leads to a slightly worse outcome compared to Garm T1.1 The higher
RCWI can be attributed to the fact that Garm B2 purchases a larger
amount of dyed fabric and thus receives a larger water backpack
from its upstream value chain which cannot be fully offset by a
higher economic benet. This already shows that both the ecological
and the economic dimension of the RCWI have a considerable impact
on the results and that the choice of supplier combination can lead to
signicant differences in the RCWIs of the individual garment
manufacturers.
If Garm T1 for example chooses the worst supplier combination
(Spin T1-Dye T2) it's RCWI will be 1348 leq/US$ while choosing the
best combination (Spin B1-Dye B1) it will only be 165 leq/US$. That
means by choosing the worst supplier combination, the RCWI of
Garm T1 increases by 716% compared to the best supplier combination. For Garm B1 and Garm B2 results are within the same range:
In both cases the worstesupplier combination leads to an increase
of 717% compared to the best supplier combination. Even if only the

1
Refers to the comparison of the same supplier combinations (e.g. Spin T1-Dye
T2-Garm T1 versus Spin T1-Dye T2-Garm B2).

150

B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

Table 7
RCWI of Garm T1, Garm B1 and Garm B2 for different supplier combinations (cotton from Brazil).
Cotton from Brazil (Best case scenario)
Supplier combination
Cotton BRA

Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin

T1
B1
T1
B1
T1
B1
T1
B1

Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye

T1
T1
T2
T2
T3
T3
B1
B1

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garm T1

27
27
18
18
8
8
0.5
0.4

Garm B1

18
18
12
12
5
5
0.2
0.2

Garm B2

29
29
19
19
9
8
0.4
0.3

Table 8
RCWI of Garm T1, Garm B1 and Garm B2 for different supplier combinations (cotton from Turkmenistan).
Cotton from Turkmenistan (Worst case scenario)
Supplier combination
Cotton Turkm

Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin
Spin

T1
T1
B1
T1
B1
B1
T1
B1

Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye
Dye

T2
T1
T2
T3
T1
T3
B1
B1

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garment maker

RCWI [leq/US$]

Garm T1

6665
4952
4031
3675
3000
2222
1364
824

Garm B1

4492
3337
2717
2476
2022
1497
919
555

Garm B2

7229
5370
4372
3985
3254
2409
1479
893

supplier combinations with Dye B1, the dyeing unit with the far
lowest RWI, are considered, the RCWI still increases by 66% if Spin
T1 is selected compared to the better combination Spin B1-Dye B1.
To sum up: The supply chain's water use as well as the amount
and costs of the purchased pre-products have a signicant impact
on the water performance of the garment manufacturer who
indirectly bears responsibility for the water use of his suppliers
through purchasing dyed fabrics. The results show that this responsibility is reected in his own RCWI.
3.3.4.2. Comparison with best and worst case scenarios (Cotton from
Brazil and Turkmenistan). As expected, the RCWIs in the different
cotton scenarios vary signicantly (cf. Table 6, Table 7 and Table 8).
While the value added at the raw material stage is rather low, water
withdrawals can be very high depending on the cotton cultivation
area. Table 9 shows a comparison of the best and worst supplier
combinations for the three cotton scenarios.
What can be seen is that high water intensities at the rst stage
of the value chain have a great effect on the RCWI of the garment
manufacturer if he purchases large quantities of dyed fabrics that
have been produced out of yarn from spinneries that purchase their
cotton lint from countries where cotton is grown on intensively
irrigated elds.
Due to the low irrigation amount and the very good water
availability in Brazil, even the RCWI of the worst supplier combination (Cotton BRA-Spin T1-Dye T1-Garm B2) only makes up 26% of

the RCWI of the best combination within the base scenario (Cotton
USA-Spin B1-Dye B1-Garm B1).
Most remarkable however is that despite the poor water availability in Turkmenistan and the enormous water use at the raw
material stage, the RCWIs of the best supplier combinations in the
worst case scenario (Cotton Turkm) are lower than the RCWIs of bad
supplier combinations in the base scenario. For all garment manufacturers considered, the supplier combination Cotton Turkm-Spin
B1-Dye B1 would result in a better RCWI than the combination
Cotton USA-Spin T1-Dye T1 or Cotton US-Spin T1-Dye T2 of the base
scenario.
This example shows that even though the water footprint of
cotton textiles is often dominated by the water use at the raw
material stage, the selection of the further suppliers is still of
importance in the context of a comprehensive assessment of global
supply chains. Although the water consumption per cubic meter of
cotton lint during cultivation in Turkmenistan is averagely four and
a half times higher than in the USA (see Table 1), the RCWI of
garment manufacturers using cotton from the USA is not inevitably
lower than the RCWI of garment manufacturers using cotton grown
in Turkmenistan. Of course, the water use in cotton cultivation and
the local water availability of the cultivation area is a major factor
for reducing water intensity in the textile chain, however, also the
further textile manufacturing chain (especially the dyeing unit)
shows optimization potential to reduce water use that should not
be neglected.

Table 9
Comparison of the best and worst supplier combinations for the three cotton scenarios.
Best case scenario (BRA)

Worst case scenario (TURKM)

Base scenario (USA)

555
Spin T1-Dye B1-Garm B1
7229
Spin T1-Dye T2-Garm B2

111
Spin B1-Dye B1-Garm B1
1461
Spin T1-Dye T2-Garm B2

RCWI (l/US$)
Best supplier combination
Worst supplier combination

0.2
Spin B1-Dye B1-Garm B1
29
Spin T1-Dye T1-Garm B2

B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

3.3.5. Conclusion
The case study proves that the effort to calculate the RCWI is
comparatively low. Except of the raw material stage, all other value
chain stages were modelled using primary data. Data collection was
most problematic for the economic variables of the ratio; this part
of the RCWI is therefore fraught with the greatest uncertainty.
A comparison of the water intensities and the mass based water
withdrawals (cf. Fig. 5) showed the resilience of the results and the
suitability of the method to evaluate the water use of suppliers and
support business decision processes. It is particularly suitable for
assessing and comparing the water performance of different suppliers as well as for examining how different decision-making options will affect the own water performance. However there are
some limitations of the ratio that should be kept in mind (cf.
chapter 5). That is why the RCWI is well suited to identify hot spots
in the supply chain and suppliers with high water intensities but
cannot substitute a detailed analysis of water use and water management of a specic supplier or production site. Therefore additional data (e.g. type of water use, seasonal demand uctuations,
type of water resource) must be collected and external factors (e.g.
trends of prices, currency uctuations, socio-economic and political
aspects of water scarcity) must be considered.
Since the RCWI was developed as a corporate water accounting
method, it focuses on supporting companies to reduce water use
along their global value chains. In this case, the use and disposal
phase of the product are of less importance and were thus excluded
from the system boundaries of the case study. Nevertheless it
should be kept in mind that the use phase often holds a signicant
potential for water savings. The problem is, however, that many
assumptions need to be made for water accounting of the use
phase, which in turn reduces the signicance of the results.
4. Implementation of RCWIs into corporate decision-making
Since the RCWI focuses on the efciency aspect of water use, it
discloses options of actions that could not be comprehensively
mapped with the established methods and tools of water footprinting, which have either a stronger product-focus (LCA) or water
management-focus (WFA). Those insights gained by calculating
RCWIs can provide important decision-making aids for companies
seeking to optimize water use of their global production chains.
With regard to companies' application, the RCWI can be used as
optimization objective which they seek to minimize. Moreover, the
advantage is that the RCWI not only quanties corporate water use,
but also indicates how the economic benet of the environmental
burden can be optimized, which is essential for corporate decisionmaking processes.
At inter-company level the RCWI allows to compare companies
with diverse product portfolios and levels of vertical integration
while the specic water availabilities at all stages of the value chain
are taken into account. Thus, it is possible to use the RCWI for
external benchmarking along corporate decision-making chains in
global productions. As part of internal benchmarking different
production sites and suppliers can be compared in terms of the
selected dimensions of water intensity, such as regional water
scarcity, direct and indirect water use, turnover and costs of preproducts. This allows identifying water-related risks, inefcient
water use and potential for improvement of suppliers and productions sites in order to resiliently optimize water use through a
targeted water management.
In terms of the RCWI optimization means either lowering the
value of the numerator or increasing the value of the denominator
in Equation (6).
Since the numerator consists of the direct and indirect water use
and the site-specic water scarcity indicator (ri) companies seeking

151

to lower their RCWI can reduce their own water withdrawals, select
suppliers according to their water backpacks or relocate waterintensive processes in areas where water is abundant. Especially
in global production chains these considerations become more and
more important since many labour-intensive processes are outsourced to low-wage countries in the South of whom many are
characterized by an arid or semi-arid climate with low water
availabilities. At the same time, the turnover and thus the share of
the added value of companies operating in those regions is lower
than in high-income countries, while the environmental standards
are often less strict. All of this leads to a high RCWI of suppliers
operating in the South. For this reason, companies might decide to
purchase water-intensive pre-products only from suppliers operating in areas with high water availability. However, this will not
only lead to a reduction of the regionalized water withdrawals
(r$W) but will also result in decreased value creation in the affected
countries in the South. In a global context, this is ultimately a
question of social justice and an important social aspect of sustainable development, since shifting value creation exclusively to
countries where water is abundant even more diminishes the
chances of development for the already disadvantaged countries.
Instead of that, regions suffering from water scarcity could also be
encouraged by retaining a greater share of the value creation of the
production which in turn requires a very efcient use of water to
ensure a continuous operation of industrial processes regardless of
local water shortages. However, looking at the denominator in
Equation (6), the RCWI can also be reduced by increasing the economic benet or the value of produced goods. The already cited
study by Rudenko et al. (2013) comes to a similar conclusion as they
recommend to upgrade the cotton value chain through moving
towards further processed cotton products with higher value added
instead of concentrating on water-intensive raw cotton products.
This would have the positive side effect that a larger share of the
added value remains in the local economy, enabling local companies to invest in more efcient technologies which again would
lead to a lower water use and a larger value of products per m3 of
water.
Thus, the RCWI includes not only an environmental and economic but also a social perspective and can therefore be seen as a
starting point for the evaluation of integrated measures for sustainable development in the eld of water management.
5. Discussion (of the method)
The major strength of the presented concept is its practicability
and ease of use that reduces the efforts of data collection and at the
same time allows water accounting throughout the entire supply
chain. Since water use is determined recursively from stage to stage
by passing on the data just to the next actor in the chain, the time
intensive analysis of the whole value chain is no longer necessary.
Furthermore the RCWI facilitates benchmarking along the supply chain as well as between companies with various portfolios and
different levels of vertical integration and also between production
sites with individual water availabilities. In contrast, many existing
water footprint methods lack a yardstick for comparison of products related to different functional units and are unsuitable for
comparisons and benchmarking. However, especially, when it
comes to supplier selection, comparability of water footprints is key
for decision-making.
While the established concepts of Product Water Footprinting
(Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2008) and Virtual Water (Allan, 1996) are
product-related, the RCWI allows a product-independent assessment, which is crucial since companies are responsible for all of
their activities and products. This approach avoids the greenwashing of individual products as an improvement of the RCWI can

152

B. Joa et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 82 (2014) 143e153

only be achieved by advancing the overall water performance of a

company and not by optimizing some single products.
Above all, the introduction of the RCWI can lead to an increase in
transparency of corporate water use at factory level, since companies therefore must implement a regular measurement of water
use which is, in contrast to energy and electricity measurements,
not yet the case for all production sites.
Besides those strengths, the method still has some limitations
requiring further research.
The question which remains unanswered is how to start the
recursive calculation of the RCWI as all actors depend on each
other's data. Especially when the system is newly introduced, it
must be possible to estimate the intensities of suppliers. For the
Cumulative Emission Intensity (Haubach, 2009) such estimations
are based on generic data from the environmental-economic and
national accounts; the transferability of this approach still needs to
be investigated.
Beyond that, the regionalization of water withdrawals has
weaknesses as not all complex aspects of water scarcity can be
genuinely mapped in one single quantitative indicator. The WSI,
which is used within this method, only indicates hydrological water
scarcity but does not cover political, socio-economic or technical
aspects of water availability nor the prevailing water quality or type
of water resource. Pster (2012) already presented advances in the
WSI through calculating monthly rather than yearly indices, which
allows to assess the variability of the WSI. However inventory data
was not yet available at monthly resolution, when this case study
was conducted.
Furthermore, data collection for the calculation of the RCWI may
be hampered by the high sensitivity of the required information. As
the case study has shown, many suppliers are reluctant to provide
economic data so that convincing is needed that the RCWI does not
allow to draw crucial insights into sales gures or prots.
Above all, one can criticize that the RCWI focuses on water
withdrawals instead of consumption. This methodological choice
was made as companies in common practice usually do not collect
data of their actual consumptive water use and can only roughly
estimate it from their waste water discharges. Thus, the focus on
water withdrawals increases the practicality of the method.
6. Outlook
The discussion of the strengths and weaknesses shows that
there is still potential for further advancement of the method of
RCWI.
The RCWI builds on the method of Cumulative Emission Intensity (Schmidt et al., 2009) that serves as a performance indicator
to evaluate the climate efciency of companies. This concept was
now transferred to freshwater usage, but is of course also applicable
to other environmental impacts. Especially for a comprehensive
analysis and assessment of corporate water use, the output side, i.e.
the wastewater discharges, should also be considered. However, to
calculate Regionalized Cumulative Wastewater Intensities the
water quality of return ows, the efciency of wastewater treatment and the self-purication capacity of the receiving water
course at each stage of the value chain should be included in the
ratio. Therefore suitable and high resolution water quality indicators still need to be developed.
Since freshwater withdrawals and wastewater discharges are
interdependent, this furthermore leads to the question, how an
integrated evaluation of a Regionalized Cumulative Wastewater
Intensity and the existing RCWI can be conducted. At the same
time, there is also an interdependence between wastewater qualities and greenhouse gas emission intensities that can lead to tradeoffs. A company-owned sewage plant for example reduces the

concentration of pollutants in the company's wastewater discharge

but at the same time leads to higher energy consumption and
therewith higher greenhouse gas emissions. Such interactions
actually require an integrated view of greenhouse gas emissions,
freshwater use and wastewater discharges that helps to identify
water efcient measures that reduce energy consumption as well
as the contamination of wastewater. Otherwise signicant environmental effects might be neglected through a unilateral focus.
Further advancements of the method will therefore concentrate
on an integrative approach for assessing water and emission intensities along global supply chains.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the German Federal Ministry of
Education and Research (BMBF) for the funding of the project
WaSChBerR under the FHprofUnt funding line (grant no./FKZ:
1769X09). We would also like to thank our project partner Systain
Consulting GmbH (Hamburg) for the fruitful cooperation and the
provision of information and data.
Abbreviations
B
BRA
Dye
Garm
LCA
RCWI
RWI
Spin
T
TURKM
USA
WFA
WI
WSI

Bangladesh
Brazil
Dyeing (unit)
Garment (maker)
Life Cycle Assessment
Regionalized Cumulative Water Intensity
Regionalized Water Intensity
Spinning (unit)
Turkey
Turkmenistan
United States of America
Water Footprint Assessment
Water Intensity
Water Stress Index

Variables
r
Wi
Ti
p
q

in formulae
regional weighting factor
Volume of water withdrawn by company i
Turnover of company i
price of purchased product
quantity of purchased product
Regionalized Cumulative Water Intensity of company i
quantity of product k that company i purchases from
supplier j
price of product k that company i purchases from supplier
j
quantity of waste k (bad) being delivered from company
i to disposer j
disposal price of waste k (bad) being delivered from
company i to disposer j
quantity of pre-product k (good) being delivered from
supplier j to company i
price of pre-product k (good) being delivered from
supplier j to company i

qri
qjik
pjik
qBjik
pBjik
qG
jik
pG
jik

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