2Sustain

I’m always on the lookout for the latest in sustainability metrics, so I was intrigued when I heard that there was a new tool available to measure corporate water footprints.

The nonprofit Center for Sustainable Innovation, in Vermont, has developed the “Corporate Water Gauge,” a resource that the company describes as “a turnkey solution for measuring the sustainability of organizational water use.” Businesses can use the Corporate Water Gauge to evaluate the environmental and social effects of water consumption at a single site, at multiple sites, or throughout an entire organization.

The tool uses a five-step method to evaluate the rate of water use measured against the rate of renewable supply. Ultimately, the process leads to the determination of a company’s sustainability performance.

Here are the five steps:

1. Profile facilities using inflow/outflow analysis
2. Determine watershed(s) in which facilities have impact
3. Determine net renewable water supplies in watershed(s) of interest and set standards of performance, accordingly
4. Determine net water use in watershed(s) of interest and measure performance, accordingly
5. Populate Corporate Water Gauge quotient using data taken from steps 1-4, and compute sustainability scores, accordingly

I like this approach because it takes local context into account when measuring sustainability performance. It also allows for sustainable water use to be expressed in per-capita, facility, and enterprise-wide terms.

More information on the Corporate Water Gauge is available here.