An inventory indicator is a direct measurement of a resource used or an emission released during a product’s lifecycle. Think of it as the raw data or the “ingredients list” for an environmental footprint.
It’s different from an impact indicator, which measures the consequence of that resource use. For example:
- Inventory (this article): How many liters of water were directly used?
- Impact: What was the stress on the local ecosystem caused by using that water?
BCome focuses on one key inventory indicator to give you this foundational data.
Water consumption
- What it measures: The total volume of fresh surface and groundwater directly consumed throughout a product’s value chain. In Life Cycle Assessment, this is often called “blue water” to distinguish it from rainwater (“green water”) that falls on crops.
- Unit: Liters (L).
- Why it’s important: This indicator gives you the straightforward, quantitative total of all the freshwater a product required. It’s the factual basis used to calculate our more complex Water Scarcity impact indicator, which puts this direct consumption into the context of local water availability.