What if everything you bought was priced around water consumption!

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By gerardrego on February 6, 2014 • ( Leave a comment )

From a discussion around a roundtable on potential of creating  disruptive startups around  the Triple Bottom-line (Social, Environmental & Economic). What about a marketplace aggregator that connects every product and service around the world and prices the consumption around water?

When a country imports or exports any product or service it is actually importing or exporting water! So for example when China says it’s importing thousand of tons of milk powder or UK exporting fruit or Denmark flowers, it’s water that is actually getting saved or spent!

With the era of “Peak Water”, water is the new oil. Every neighborhood from California to Bangalore is either importing water or rationalizing usage. Water is probably the most imported commodity that is being utilized on a scale like never before. What if everything you bought was priced around water consumption!Prof. Arjen Hoekstra at the University if Twente, is pioneering work in the the consumption of water across supplychains.  This is very interesting work.

http://www.utwente.nl/ctw/wem/organisatie/medewerkers/hoekstra/arjen_hoekstra/

Globalization of Water: Sharing the Planet’s Freshwater Resources
Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Ashok K. Chaplain
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405163356.html

“Why a Water Footprint Network?
The interest in the concept of the water footprint and the accompanying methods and tools is overwhelming. This interest is rooted in the recognition that human impacts on freshwater systems can ultimately be linked to human consumption and that issues like water shortages and pollution can be better understood and addressed by considering production and supply chains as a whole”

http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/WaterFootprintLogo

What if every product or service that a consumer, business or government bought was “Priced” based on the price of water traded locally in that country?  This would create a global index for water and not the product itself, opening new vistas for investment by consumers, mainstream finance and products that leverage their supplychains around water consumption and the price of water in the local country of consumption of the product or service.

This would also lead to Triple Bottom-line and impact;

1. Accounting standard around Water

2. Product pricing around local water pricing and supplychain utility of water and energy
3. Investments in water re-cycling to reduce costs and prices

4. Water gets traded like Oil/Other Commodities

5. Open new asset classes across the supplychain to consumer Bonds/Equity

6.Create a competitive advantages on the consumption of water, rather the labor or energy

Thus a marketplace that links all products and services around water becomes the new mechanism for product and service pricing in real-time based on local water patters. So a product where water is more scare and thus expensive to create a product or service is priced into the product and where the consumption take place the actual cost is added and thus determining the real-price.

                 

After all in this era and time, water is the new oil and marketplaces are eating industries.

http://gerardjrego.com/2013/12/29/why-marketplaces-are-eating-industries/

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged as: Arjen Hoekstra, gerard rego, water consumption