Water footprint assessment of Indonesian Batik production

The population growth leads to the increasing needs for the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. Various kinds of natural resources are used continuously to meet those needs and may even be exaggerated and over-exploited, leading to scarcity. One of them is clean water. Clean water is used in almost all industries, both directly or indirectly. The higher the volume of water used to make a product, the higher the contribution of the product to the scarcity of water. Moreover, if the liquid waste potentially contaminated with chemicals is discharged into the environment, it can change the quality of clean water in the surrounding environment. The impact of water uses to produce a product can be determined by using the water footprint concept, which is expressed in an impact score (IS). The research was conducted in an SME in Laweyan batik industry in Surakarta named Oguud. The object was the process of making block-printed batik for 16 pieces of cloth, in which each fabric is 2.75 meters in length and 1.75 meters in width. Taking into account the water requirements for humans and the environment, as well as the availability of water in the Surakarta region, the impact of embodied water in the batik production system is 0.1025 m3. In other words, to make 16 pieces of cloth, it requires 102.5 litres of direct water or 6.41 litres of water per piece.