Type of indicator
Qualitative
Relative dimension and aggregated criteria
Environmental sustainability: Abiotic resources conservation: Water use
Description
This indicator estimates water consumption for the dairy herd. It includes drinking and cleaning water during the housing and grazing periods. As water is a limited resource, it is an important parameter to take into account when evaluating abiotic resources conservation efforts. This indicator can be directly obtained during the survey. Alternatively, it can be estimated with the LCA method for the housing period (assuming that water consumption is null during grazing).
Unit
L/kg of milk
Indicator interpretation
Higher values indicate larger negative impacts on the environment.
Scale definition
| Reference values
(L/kg of milk) |
Scales | Dexi interpretation | References | |
| 3.65 | <3.5 | Low | + | Based on (Krauß et al., 2016) |
| 3.94 | [3.5; 3.9[ | Low to medium | ||
| 4.23 | [3.9; 4.4] | Medium to high | ||
| > 4.4 | High | – | ||
The Mean blue water consumption for the production of 1kg of milk between 1999 to 2008 for Holstein Friesian cow in Brandenburg (Germany) was 3.94 +-0.29 L. (Krauß et al., 2016)
The blue water consumption used mostly as drinking water accounts for 1.7% to 6.3 % of the water footprint (Brizga et al., 2021) => variation of 4.6%
Mean of water for drinking: 77.5L/cow/d (3.32L/kg milk) and for cleaning: 15,610 L/cow/y.
References
Adapted from (Van Calker et al., 2004)