ISO/TR 14073 – Your Water Footprint

ISO/TR 14073 has just been released.  It’s titled “Environmental management – Water footprint – Illustrative examples on how to apply ISO 14046.”  You’ll use this to help your organization define your “water footprint!”

So first we need to define “water footprint.”  This is the metric(s) that quantifies your potential environmental impacts related to water.  The ISO 14046 provides you with the principles, requirements and guidelines of any of the ISO environmental management systems.  It is used specifically for the assessment of your “water footprint.”  And it can be part of a life cycle assessment program.

As with any new management system standard, there are still questions about how to implement your program.  The ISO/TR 14073 provides you with examples that can help you make the various choices needed during your assessment phase.  This is a rapidly developing field.  Your standards developing organizations intend for this technical report to facilitate widespread application of this process.

How many examples are given in the ISO/TR 14073?  There are 18 separate examples included in this publication.  They cover such varied situations as agriculture (rice production), energy (power plants), manufacturing (textiles), municipal water management, hotel and water reservoir operations.  Goal and scope, inventory, impact assessment and interpretation are reviewed for each.  Additional issues discussed in this publication include seasonality, use of a base line, evaporation, water quality, and so on.  A 43-item bibliography completes the document.

Many organizations are looking for ways to both measure and manage their environmental impacts.  Water remains a top concern for many of these entitities.  Use of both the ISO 14046 and the ISO/TR 14073 can only improve the performance of these organizations in gaining control over their impact on the communities in which they operate.

To get copies of these standards, you’ll use an authorized distributor like Document Center Inc.  You can search for and order standards at our webstore, www.document-center.com.  Here is a direct link to the order page for ISO/TR 14073 and to the order page for ISO 14046.

Should you want to set up online access for your organization’s compliance documentation set, contact our staff.  They’ll be happy to provide you with more information on our Standards Online cloud-based service.  You can reach us by phone (650-591-7600) and by email (info@document-center.com).  Make us your Standards Experts!