Water Footprint Evaluation of Korean Foods using Lunch Menu Data of High Schools
Abstract
Pressures on water resources are increasing mainly as a result of urbanization, human and industry activity, and growing competition for water. As pressures on water resources, there is growing interest in evaluating the water resource consumption and availability. Currently, an important water resources evaluation method is water footprint. The water footprint is to calculate the total amount of indirect and direct water consumption of a good and service. These days many international studies and factors for water footprint are conducted and developed. However, the water footprint researches about Korean foods and products as well as Korean factors are not well evaluated and developed. The purpose of this study is to calculate the water footprints (direct and indirect water consumption) of Korean foods based on high school lunch menu data. Our study result shows that the indirect water consumption has about 99% while the direct water consumption has below 1% in total water consumption of foods. For further study, Korean water footprint factors should be constructed and used, and this water footprint research can be connected with food mileage and carbon footprint researches.