Amount of water necessary to produce products.

Can you help me locate a reliable reference for the amount of water necessary to produce electronic and industrial products, such as a computer or a car? I’ve found lots of information through the USGS webpages on water consumption for agricultural products but nothing on industrial products (other than a reference ‘steel’ and ‘copper’).

Answer

From my research, it seems it is not easy to calculate the water footprint for industrial products, so there is not a lot of information available. The best information I found is from www.waterfootprint.org . As for their credibility, see this from their homepage:

“This is the site of the Water Footprint Network since its launch in 2008. The website was originally set up by prof. Arjen Y. Hoekstra and dr. Ashok K. Chapagain at UNESCO-IHE in 2004. Currently the website is hosted and maintained by the University of Twente, the Netherlands.”


The information for industrial products is here http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/productgallery&product=industrial .

The World Water Assessment Programme (UNESCO) gives some interesting water and industry statistics by country’s income.

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  • Last Updated Jul 13, 2020
  • Views 43
  • Answered By UHD Librarian

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