Activities of Water Use in LCA (WULCA)

Abstract

The impacts of water use have rapidly gained attention in Life Cycle Assessment（LCA）since around 2007. The WULCA（Water Use in LCA）working group has taken initiatives to lead discussions of assessing impacts related to water use and the development of consensus and recommendations. The working group is composed of various international experts and stakeholders from academia, industry and public institutions. The aims of the working group are to develop a general assessment framework for water use（inventory schemes, impact assessment methods including indicators）and derive recommended practice and guidance for LCA method developers and practitioners. Members in the working group are involved in the activities in accordance with their commitment and contributions to deliverables. Meetings with active members have been regularly held to discuss and establish a general framework for water use. As results of this discussion in the past years, definition of a general framework for assessing water use in LCA, a review of methods and quantitative analysis of the differences in existing models are published as deliverables from the working group. Currently, one of the main points in the discussion has moved on to the development of consensual indicators for assessing the impacts of water use, in line with the activities of UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative Flagship Project on “Global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators”. The consensuses are being built to achieve a harmonized method for assessing the impacts of water use from a scientific and practical point of view by a variety of developers and stakeholders. Expert workshops were held for integrating knowledge and comments from experts in various fields, including outside of LCA. The working group also contributes to support the implementation of water footprinting and water impact assessment in LCA in practice, and training courses have been conducted in various regions of the world. The training aims to instruct practitioners to gain understanding and practice on the topic of water footprint, as well as interpret the results in the appropriate way. Main outputs and deliverables are available online through the website of WULCA and LinkedIn.