Textiles are essential to humans in a variety of ways, especially clothing. However, the speed at which they end up in landfills is astonishing (one garbage truck per second), posing a severe risk to the environment, if the trend continues. Governments and responsible organizations are starting to make calls to different stakeholders to redesign the textile chain from linear to circular economy. In this perspective, we highlight some of the possible approaches to be undertaken including the need for the creation of renewable raw materials sources, rethinking production, maximum use and reuse of textile products, reproduction, and recycling strategies, redistribution of textiles to new and parallel markets, and improvising means to extend the textiles lifetime.

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Circular Economy and Sustainability of the Clothing and Textile Industry

Water use efficiency (WUE) improvements in agricultural production are of great significance to regional food security and ecological sustainability. Based on modified water footprint (WF) calculations for corn cultivation in China, WUE indices of water productivity (WP) and water efficiency (WE) for production capacity and the effective ratio of water resources were developed and quantified in the current study. Approaches to achieving national productive and effective improvements concurrently were sought by determining the spatial-temporal patterns and determinants of WP and WE during 1996–2015. The results show that the annual crop WF was estimated at 197.3 m³, including 14.1 % blue, 62.4 % green and 23.4 % gray components. WP and WE were calculated as 0.781 kg/m³ and 0.687, respectively, both of which increased over time in all subregions. Both WP and WE showed obvious spatial differences in the observed period. Low-value provinces were concentrated in the northwest and on the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, and most high-value regions were distributed in the southeastern coastal zone. Agricultural production technology improvements contributed to WF reductions in specific areas, while meteorological elements and planting structure were the main factors affecting the spatial distribution of WP and WE. WF suppression in northwestern China and expansion of the production scale in southern China were conducive to increasing productive and effective agricultural water resource use in corn cultivation nationally. Agricultural production technology progress and crop spatial arrangement optimization are equally important to agricultural WUE enhancement in the WF framework.

Agricultural Water Use Efficiency and Driving Force Assessment to Improve Regional Productivity and Effectiveness

Considering that 4 billion people are living in water-stressed regions and that global water consumption is predicted to increase continuously [...]

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/6/803/pdf

Water Footprint and Life Cycle Assessment: The Complementary Strengths of Analyzing Global Freshwater Appropriation and Resulting Local Impacts

A framework assessing the footprints of food consumption. An application on water footprint in Europe

Ending hunger and ensuring food security are among targets of 2030’s SDGs. While food trade and the embedded (virtual) water (VW) may improve food availability and accessibility for more people all year round, the sustainability and efficiency of food and VW trade needs to be revisited. In this research, we assess the sustainability and efficiency of food and VW trades under two food security scenarios for Iran, a country suffering from an escalating water crisis. These scenarios are (1) Individual Crop Food Security (ICFS), which restricts calorie fulfillment from individual crops and (2) Crop Category Food Security (CCFS), which promotes “eating local” by suggesting food substitution within the crop category. To this end, we simulate the water footprint and VW trades of 27 major crops, within 8 crop categories, in 30 provinces of Iran (2005–2015). We investigate the impacts of these two scenarios on (a) provincial food security (FSp) and exports; (b) sustainable and efficient blue water consumption, and (c) blue VW export. We then test the correlation between agro-economic and socio-environmental indicators and provincial food security. Our results show that most provinces were threatened by unsustainable and inefficient blue water consumption for crop production, particularly in the summertime. This water mismanagement results in 14.41 and 8.45 billion m3 y−1 unsustainable and inefficient blue VW exports under ICFS. “Eating local” improves the FSp value by up to 210% which lessens the unsustainable and inefficient blue VW export from hotspots. As illustrated in the graphical abstract, the FSp value strongly correlates with different agro-economic and socio-environmental indicators, but in different ways. Our findings promote “eating local” besides improving agro-economic and socio-environmental conditions to take transformative steps toward eradicating food insecurity not only in Iran but also in other countries facing water limitations.

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Agro-economic and socio-environmental assessments of food and virtual water trades of Iran.

The water footprint has developed into a widely-used concept to examine water use and resulting local impacts caused during agricultural and industrial production. Building on recent advancements in the water footprint concept, it can be an effective steering instrument to support, inter alia, achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) - SDG 6 in particular. Within the research program “Water as a Global Resource” (GRoW), an initiative of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, a number of research projects currently apply and enhance the water footprint concept in order to identify areas where water is being used inefficiently and implement practical optimization measures (see imprint for more information). With this paper, we aim to raise awareness on the potential of the water footprint concept to inform decision-making in the public and private sectors towards improved water management and achieving the SDGs.

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Advancing the Water Footprint into an Instrument to Support Achieving the SDGs – Recommendations from the “Water as a Global Resources” Research Initiative (GRoW)

Who may use scarce water? An expedition into the normative basis of sustainable decision-making norms for sustainable water use

Abstract Water provision and distribution are subject to conflicts between users worldwide, with agriculture as a major driver of discords. Water sensitive ecosystems and their services are often impaired by man-made water shortage. Nevertheless, they are not sufficiently included in sustainability or risk assessments and neglected when it comes to distribution of available water resources. The herein presented contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6) and Life on Land (SDG 15) is the Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water distribution (ESAW-tool). The ESAW-tool introduces a watershed sustainability assessment that evaluates the sustainability of the water supply-demand ratio on basin level, where domestic water use and the water requirements of ecosystems are considered as most important water users. An ecological risk assessment estimates potential impacts of agricultural depletion of renewable water resources on (ground)water-dependent ecosystems. The ESAW-tool works in standard GIS applications and is applicable in basins worldwide with a set of broadly available input data. The ESAW-tool is tested in the Danube river basin through combination of high-resolution hydro-agroecological model data (hydrological land surface process model PROMET and groundwater model OpenGeoSys) and further freely available data (water use, biodiversity and wetlands maps). Based on the results, measures for more sustainable water management can be deduced, such as increase of rainfed agriculture near vulnerable ecosystems or change of certain crops. The tool can support decision making of authorities from local to national level as well as private enterprises who want to improve the sustainability of their supply chains. 

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Anna Schlattmann

Papers

Advancing the Water Footprint into an Instrument to Support Achieving the SDGs – Recommendations from the “Water as a Global Resources” Research Initiative (GRoW)

Who may use scarce water? An expedition into the normative basis of sustainable decision-making norms for sustainable water use

Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water Distribution for the Maintenance of Ecosystems, their Services and Biodiversity