Corporate Water Footprint: Risks, Opportunities, and Management Options for Sustainable Development

N. Petrovic^1, and M. Cirovic¹

¹Center for Environmental Management and Sustainable Development, University of Belgrade Faculty of Organizational Sciences, Belgrade, Serbia

Cite this paper:
N. Petrovic and M. Cirovic. Corporate Water Footprint: Risks, Opportunities, and Management Options for Sustainable Development. American Journal of Environmental Protection. 2013; 1(4):120-123. doi: 10.12691/env-1-4-8

Abstract

For many companies, freshwater is a basic ingredient for their operations, while effluents may lead to pollution of the local hydrological ecosystem. Initially, public pressure has been the most important reason for sustainable business initiatives, but today many companies recognize that failure to manage the freshwater issue raises risks, including damage to the corporate image, threat of increased regulatory control, financial risks caused by pollution, or insufficient freshwater availability for operations. It is therefore interesting to know the specific water requirements of various consumer goods, particularly the water-intensive ones. This paper discusses specialised water reporting instruments such as the ‘water footprint’ calculation method and demonstrates it's usefulness in measuring and monitoring corporate sustainability. The water footprint analysis can highlight how near or far a company is from being sustainable and identify those aspects that have the greatest negative effect on freshwater and entire environment. Also it can highlights further management options and ways that companies address in their use of freshwater as one of the aspects of sustainable business performance, because today, many companies recognise that proactive environmental management contributes to their profitability and competitiveness in green markets.

Keywords:
freshwater sustainable development water footprint corporate waterfootprint

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