Treating Water With Respect

Description | Indicators | Scoring Criteria | Definitions | Issues

Issues we have identified for development in version 2 or beyond. We welcome feedback and ideas on these or other issues of concern for consideration.

Regional impacts: Water supply availability varies widely from region to region. Should Pharos account for this regional variability in the importance of water scarcity? We welcome analysis of this issue and ideas in how to incorporate it into the Pharos framework and scoring system.

Use phase and end of life water usage: While the goal of this credit is minimization over the entire life cycle, for the vast majority of products, most of if not all of the water usage is generally in the cradle-to-gate phase of the product life cycle. The current Pharos scoring indicators are based on a cradle to gate analysis. We recognize that there may be a few products that have sufficient usage of water in the usage phase to significantly affect the overall water usage in the life cycle. We welcome identification of products that may fall into this category, studies that help assess the relative importance of use phase water consumption and ideas on how best to incorporate analysis of use phase water usage into the Pharos framework and scoring system.

Functional units: The standard unit of product for a given product class used for these comparisons is related only to physical size - square foot, linear foot, etc. It does not include all of the parameters typically included in "functional units" as defined for life cycle analyses, such as performance characteristics or time. Definition of functional units and how they will be used in this tool is a task for future versions. We welcome suggestions.

Boundaries: Insuring common boundaries in the calculation of embodied water is a big challenge.

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