Enhancing eco-innovation performance: Evidence from a water footprint assessment in the manufacturing industry

This paper describes a method to assess the water footprint in the manufacturing industry. Data are collected from two manufacturing plants of Volvo (Umea and Tuve) in Sweden and constitute the baseline scenario against which seven new scenarios are tested. Such new scenarios describe the implementation of seven different technologies into the water management system of the organization. A combination of key performance indicators is instrumental to generate the water footprint of each scenario. Through this method, we are able to disentangle which technological change can pave the way towards a substantial improvement of the organizational water footprint.