ORIGINAL RESEARCH
A Single-Indicator Approach to Assessing
the Water Footprint of Zhejiang’s
Textile Industry
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1
School of Fashion Design and Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310018, China
2
Office for Social Responsibility of China National Textile and Apparel Council, 100027 Beijing, China
3
Institute of Science and Technology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, 310018 Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
4
Zhejiang Provincial Innovation Center of Advanced Textile Technology, Shaoxing, Zhejiang 312000, China
Submission date: 2022-03-24
Final revision date: 2022-05-26
Acceptance date: 2022-06-02
Online publication date: 2022-10-13
Publication date: 2022-12-08
Corresponding author
Laili Wang
School of Fashion Design & Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310018, China, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2022;31(6):5683-5691
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ABSTRACT
Water footprint is an indicator to quantify the potential environmental impacts related to water.
Current methods for the water footprint assessment can only obtain the results which are typically
reported as a profile of impact category indicator results. Due to the diverse and incomparable results,
the demand for a single indicator for water footprint assessment is highlighted in recent years. In this
paper, an improved approach integrating water quantity and quality into a single indicator was proposed
for water footprint assessment. Then, a case study for water footprint assessment of Zhejiang’s textile
industry was analyzed with this approach. The results revealed that the comprehensive assessment
indicator of water footprint (CAIwf) of Zhejiang’s textile industry decreased more than 20% from
2008 to 2018. CAIwf and endpoint indicator of water footprint (WFend) obtained with volumetric water
footprint approach depicted similar tendencies to the CAIwf and WFend obtained with impact-oriented
water footprint approach. Among the three sub-sectors of Zhejiang’s textile industry, the CAIwf of
textile manufacture sector was the largest, followed by chemical fiber manufacture sector and clothing
manufacture sector.