Water Footprint Assessment of a Tea Product in Sri Lanka A Case Study of Black Tea and Selected Tea Flavours

Abstract

The rising global population and depleting aquifers will lead to a global water crisis indifferent perspectives. In this context business world will face physical risk, reputational risk,regulatory risk, and financial risk that may translate into increased costs and/or reducedrevenues. Presently most of the corporate sector is working towards to efficient watermanagement in their business operations to overcome the farseeing water related risks. Waterfootprint is the one of the emerging tool to assess the total impact to the water by an entity.This study emphasizes the business valve of estimation of product water footprint for a SriLankan tea product to capture the competitive advantage in global market.

The aim of this study is to assess the ‘virtual water footprint’ through life cycle of a teaproduction, mainly focusing on the fresh water consumption starting from the cultivationstage of green tea leaves and continuing on to tea processing and transportation to finally thepackaging stage. The study distinguishes between three types of impact: evaporation ofinfiltrated rainwater for tea growth (green water use), withdrawal of ground- or surface waterfor irrigation or processing (blue water use) and water pollution during growth or processing.The latter impact is quantified in terms of the dilution volume necessary to assimilate thepollution (Gary water). For the study, virtual water footprints of six flavours of tea productswere analysed according to the water footprint manual published by water FootprintNetwork.

According to the study, the average virtual water footprint of the 1.5 g tea bag from the greenleaf production up to the manufacturer’s gate for black tea is 19.8 liters (l), green tea is 18.46l and average virtual water footprint for flavoured tea is 20.22 l ± 7.04 l per tea bag. Averagevirtual water footprint for the ingredients including raw tea and flavours contribute 93.6% forthe total water footprint and the 6.4% of the total water footprint accountable for the virtualwater footprint of the packaging materials.