Client
Ferrer is a pharmaceutical and chemical company which covers all links in the medication and pharmaceutical value chain, ranging from research and development to distribution and supply.
Challenge
Calculating the water footprint (ISO 14046) of the organisation and identifying the processes with a greater contribution on the consumption and availability of water.
What was done?
The project to calculate Ferrer’s water footprint evaluated the water vector from various perspectives: consumption, scarcity and water quality, and it analysed its use with a life-cycle vision, from the manufacturing of the raw materials to waste use and management.
Results
7
Productive centres analysed and subsidiaries with activity in 10 countries.
4
Impact categories: water scarcity, water consumption, acidification and eutrophication.
29%
Of the scarcity impact comes from direct water consumption during manufacturing and in the use phase.
Conclusions
Analysing the impact on water in parallel to the carbon footprint analysis allows the identification of whether there are measures that may improve one of these indicators but worsen the other. Specifically, this methodology enables us to see that, despite having renewable electricity, we can make an important impact on water availability if the renewable mix is very water intensive.
As it is a regional impact, it also enables identification in which the consumption can have a greater impact and thus make decisions based on where to place the most water-intensive processes.
All the cases