The Utilization of Water Footprint Education to Build-up the Level of Environmental Awareness

Abstract

Due to the water scarcity situation worldwide, there are many campaigns introduced to raise the awareness of people for the purpose of saving water. According to the manufacturing businesses, one of the initiatives is the water footprint focusing on the calculation of the amount of freshwater used to manufacture a product. For Thailand, the income from the exported ceramic products is accounted for approximately 15,000 million baht per year. Likewise, the large amount of water usage related to the manufacturing is also high. Therefore, if the industry itself is able to assess how its manufacturing process contributes to the water consumption and polluted water, the study will lead to the increasing level of awareness of the business operators. In this study, the amount of water used for the whole life cycle of a ceramic product, i.e., resource extraction, manufacture, daily use and disposal, is assessed by following ISO 14046: 2014 guidelines. The water footprint is calculated by categorizing into blue water, green water and grey water footprint. Moreover, the water footprint of ceramic package is also included in the calculation. Afterwards, the water footprint is used as the scaffolding technique to enhance the level of environmental awareness among ceramic business operators. The results indicate that the awareness is significantly built up after the application of water footprint education. This will lead to the sustainable use of water in the ceramic business.



Author Information
Karin Kandananond, Faculty of Industrial Technology, Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University, Thailand

Paper Information
Conference: ECE2016
Stream: Education for sustainable development

This paper is part of the ECE2016 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon