Water Footprint of Textiles Tool

Welcome to the Water Footprint of Textiles Tool! This Tool helps you calculate the water footprint of fibre processing through a few simple questions. Let’s begin.

General Questions

How would you characterize your company?
What kind of fibers do you process?
Please select your processing steps for Cellulosic fibers.
Please select your processing steps for Protein fibers.
Please select your processing steps for Synthetic fibers.

Water Use and Blue Water Footprint

The following questions will help you calculate your water use and your blue water footprint. Although often used interchangeably, water use and water consumption are two different indicators that are both relevant to understand.

Water use refers to gross volumes of water, such as the (metered) intake from taps or wells. Water consumption refers to net volumes of water (water that does not or cannot be returned to the water system) and can be calculated by subtracting water discharge from water intake. Water consumption is measured by the blue water footprint.

The blue water footprint gives a more accurate measure of the appropriation of fresh water by a user such as a textile processor.

Do you know your water use?
Please enter water use per processing step for Cellulosic fibers (m³ /year)
Please enter water use per processing step for Protein fibers (m³ /year)
Please enter water use per processing step for Synthetic fibers (m³ /year)
Please enter water use of your entire operations (m³ /year)
Do you know your water consumption?
Please enter water consumption per processing step for Cellulosic fibers (m³ /year)
Please enter water consumption per processing step for Protein fibers (m³ /year)
Please enter water consumption per processing step for Synthetic fibers (m³ /year)
Please enter water consumption of your entire operations (m³ /year)

Grey Water Footprint

A water footprint also includes a pollution component, the grey water footprint. The grey water footprint of a product is an indicator of freshwater pollution but it is NOT the same as wastewater. It is calculated as the volume of freshwater that is required to dilute pollutants to such an extent that the quality of the water remains above ambient water quality standards. In other words, it estimates the amount of clean freshwater necessary to dilute pollutants from untreated or poorly treated wastewater. The following questions will help calculate your grey water footprint.

Do you know the volume of the effluent of your operations (m³ /year)?
Do you know the concentrations of pollutants in your effluent?
Please enter the concentrations per pollutant in your effluent (mg/L)
If you do not have concentrations for all substances, leave that box empty.


Thank you for completing the questions in this water footprint tool. The results will show after submitting the data.