Better Figure Out Your Water Footprint

As part of its forthcoming sustainability index, Wal-Mart is asking its suppliers to start tracking their greenhouse gas emissions, water usage and waste production. Companies have been concerned with their carbon footprints for years and over 1500 global firms have already disclosed their emissions through initiatives like the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Carbon will continue to dominate the headlines as the Senate debates the cap-and-trade bill and December's Copenhagen conference on climate change approaches. However, there are indications that the next big business battles will be over water rights. If your company hasn't inventoried its "water footprint" yet, now is the time to get a game plan going.

Health and food lobby groups in the UK are now pushing for "water footprint" labeling on consumer products. Get ready to hear more about how one kilogram of beef requires 16 thousand liters of water. It's going to be tougher to swallow that steak in the States (each American's water footprint stands at 2500 cubic meters per year) when more people realize over a billion don't have adequate access to safe water.
The catastrophic effects of climate change could take decades to materialize. Assessing blame and assigning liability will be difficult, if not impossible. But the industrial extraction of water causes immediate issues. When companies compromise water reservoirs and pollute public waterways, locals fight back, as they've done in Maine against Nestlé's Poland Spring operations. A new bill in Congress aims to tax businesses that turn profits from products containing municipal water or contribute to water pollution.
Coca-Cola aspires to be the first "water neutral" corporation by 2010. It probably won't be the last.

Photo by Flickr user "Jim Linwood," CC 2.0.