Water footprint is an indicator of freshwater use that looks not only at direct water use of a consumer or producer, but also at
indirect water use; it can be regarded as a comprehensive indicator of freshwater resources appropriation, next to the traditional
and restricted measure of water withdrawal. It could be counted in terms of the sum of direct and indirect water costs in all
processes and input-output analysis to detailed water used in all plant.
In this paper, the application of the water footprint in a construction business located in Eastern Sicily is presented, its main
activity is represented by the production of aggregates, bituminous and concrete mixes.
In order to identify the economic, social and environmental advantages, we quantify this multi-dimensional indicator and we
analyse the water incorporation into products, evaporation, abstracted from ground-or surface water and returned to another
catchments or sea, with unavailable degradation in quality. It consists of two main components: the operational (or direct) water
footprint of a business is the volume of freshwater consumed or polluted due to the business’s own operations. Thanks to the
calculation of the Water Footprint the amount of water resources that a company of this size really requires was understood and
greatly exploits the opportunity and the strategies to reduce its water consumption, such as installation of a system for collecting
rainwater, continuous recycling system and new sleeve filters. The costs of these investments were calculated by choosing
different alternatives to safe non-renewable water.