Studies On Two Foundational Issues Arising In The Industrial Water Footprint Of Textile And Apparel

Water resource is a precious resource which human survival and development depend on. However, with the high development in industry, the contradiction between supply and demand of water resource is more and more outstanding and the situation is day by day prominent. Textile and apparel industry also increasingly faces water availability and quality issues in its widely distributed supply chain. In this context, two urgent foundational issues arising in the industrial water footprint of textile and apparel--one concerns water footprint factor of energy and materials, the other concerns regional effects and seasonal effects--are analyzed deeply and their solution methods are proposed, respectively. This study is intended to improve and strengthen the construction and implementation of industrial water footprint’s calculation system. It also aims at providing theoretic basis and data support for realizing sustainable development of textile and apparel industry, and driving the upgrading of the industry structure.In view of water footprint factor of energy and materials, its accounting system is established based on the theory and calculating methods of water footprint of products. Specifically, the basic concept and accounting framework of water footprint factor of energy and materials is defined. And its calculation methodology is discussed in detail. Then several energy and materials’water footprint factors are calculated. On the side of energy, it shows that the water footprint factors of raw coal, standard coal, natural gas, thermal power, steam, unleaded gasoline, light diesel oil and coke are7.01m3/t,9.81m3/t,9.25m3/t,10.05xl0-3m3/kW·h,2.80m3/t,7.77m3/t,7.77m3/t and22.11m3/t, respectively. On the material side, it shows that the water footprint factors of plastic products, metal products, textile products (woven), textile products (knitted), dyes, textile auxiliaries, and paper products are29.27m3/t,82.85m3/t,11.04m3/t,568.59m3/t,570.66m3/t,201.66m3/t and10567.39m3/Adt, respectively. In addition, a method of uncertainty analysis for water footprint factors is presented, and uncertainty analysis on the above results are carried out in this study. Overall, the quality of calculating results is relatively good and the uncertainty of this calculating system is relatively low.In view of regional effects and seasonal effects, this paper firstly defines the basic concepts of region water stress index (RWSI) and seasonal water stress index (SWSI), monitoring them as quantitative indicators of effects on industrial water footprint caused by different production regions and manufacturing cycles. Then the models for evaluation of regional water resource and seasonal water resource are developed. Using these two models, RWSI of31provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in China during2006-2010are calculated, as well as SWSI of China’s31major cities. Secondly, this paper introduces H2Oe as reference unit to integrate regional effects and seasonal effects into the final result of industrial water footprint. Lastly, a new accounting system of textile and apparel’s industrial water footprint based on RWSI and SWSI is established. In addition, it is shown by a practical case in this paper that this new accounting method could reflect the different effects on industrial water footprint caused by different production regions and manufacturing cycles, and also provide meaningful comparisons between different industrial water footprints.