Water footprinting of agricultural products: evaluation of different protocols using a case study of New Zealand wine

Herath, Indika; Green, Steve; Horne, David J.; Singh, Ranvir; McLaren, Susan; Clothier, Brent

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.01.008

Cited by 58 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…WF methods used were: Water Footprint Network (WFN) method; life cycle assessment (LCA)-based methods (e.g., Freshwater ecosystem impact and Freshwater depletion) and hydrological water balance method [27].…”

Section: Life Cycle Impact Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Assessment Application to the Wine Sector: A Critical Review

Ferrara

Feo

2018

Sustainability

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool that allows evaluation of the environmental performances of a product, service or process considering the whole life cycle or a part of it. In the wine sector, the application of LCA has grown significantly in recent years and several studies have been carried out about this topic that are similar to other research fields. Nowadays, LCA is an important and acknowledged environmental assessment tool but its application to the wine sector is still in a developing phase. For this reason, the present study proposes a critical review of papers dealing with both the wine sector and LCA. The critical review points out that the main wine hotspots are the viticulture phase (mainly due to fuel, fertilizer and pesticides consumption) and the wine primary packaging production (due to glass bottles). Furthermore, the papers taken into consideration have a wide variability in the system boundaries definition as well as a shortage of availability of original and site-specific inventory data. Such key factors are sensitive aspects that have a huge influence on the results of a study and they are also affected by a wide variability: these issues need further scientific contribution through future studies.

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Section: Life Cycle Impact Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Assessment Application to the Wine Sector: A Critical Review

Ferrara

Feo

2018

Sustainability

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“…Ridoutt et al [12] calculated the WFs of six diverse beef cattle production systems in southern Australia and compared them with the respective Carbon Footprint (CF) using endpoint indicators. Herath et al taking as reference New Zealand's wines, assessed WFs of a wine bottle using different methods [13] and also evaluated the impacts of water use through the life cycle of grape-wine production on water resources [14]. Regarding the wine industry, moreover, Quinteiro et al [15] assessed the quantitative freshwater use of a Portuguese wine using different methods under the framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), while Ene et al [16] carried out a water footprint assessment of a bottle of wine produced in a medium-size wine production plant in Romania.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Water Footprint of the Wine Industry: Implementation of an Assessment Methodology and Application to a Case Study

et al. 2015

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An original methodology for the Water Footprint Assessment (WFA) of a Product for the wine-making industry sector is presented, with a particular focus on the evaluation procedure of the grey water. Results obtained with the proposed methodology are also presented for an Italian case study. The product was analyzed using a life-cycle approach, with the aim of studying the water volumes of each phase according to the newly-released ISO 14046 international standard. The functional unit chosen in this study is the common 0.75 liter wine bottle. An in-house software (V.I.V.A.) was implemented with the goal of accounting for all the contributions in a cradle-to-grave approach. At this stage, however, minor water volumes associated with some foreground and background processes are not assessed. The evaluation procedure was applied to a case study and green, blue, and grey water volumes were computed. Primary data were collected for a red wine produced by an Umbrian wine-making company. Results are in accordance with global average water footprint values from literature, showing a total WF of 632.2 L/bottle, with the major contribution (98.3%) given by green water, and minor contributions (1.2% and 0.5%) given by grey and blue water, respectively. A particular effort was dedicated to the definition of an improved methodology for the assessment of the virtual water volume required to dilute the load of pollutants on the environment below some reference level (Grey WF). The improved methodology was elaborated to assure the completeness of the OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 12191 water footprint assessment and to overcome some limitations of the reference approach. As a result, the overall WF can increase up to 3% in the most conservative hypotheses.

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“…However, many of the components of the water balance are difficult to estimate or are not available, such as estimates of actual crop consumptive use being questionable at the regional scale. Therefore, further studies relative to the hydrological process, water accounting components, water rights and agricultural nonpoint pollution, are required in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of agricultural production at irrigation district scale (Lecina et al, 2011;Hoekstra, 2013;Herath et al, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It serves as an indicator of freshwater resource appropriation, giving valuable insight about the environmental impact of consuming a given product (Herath et al, 2013;Pfister and Bayer, 2014;Rodriguez et al, 2015). The water footprint of a crop product is the volume of water both consumed and affected by agricultural pollutants during the crop production process, and it contains three components: green water footprint (the volume of effective precipitation consumed during the crop production); blue water footprint (volume of surface or groundwater consumed during crop production); and grey water footprint (the volume of freshwater that is required to assimilate the load of agricultural pollutants, such as chemical fertilizer and pesticide) Hoekstra et al, 2011;Sun et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%