Scope

This document describes the water and waste totals calculated inside the Higg FEM 2025 assessment itself. Answer values referenced here (for example yes and no) are the option indices stored with the assessment, not the display text shown to the facility.

Water Data

Data about production and domestic water use is collected in the Water section of FEM separated by facility type.

Domestic water use is either reported as a part of production use, in the case that a facility cannot separate the water usage, or separately.

You can determine whether a facility is reporting water values split between domestic and production or combined by looking at the ref_id wattrackdomprodsep an answer of no means the facility is reporting combined (row 3 in the table below) and yes means separated (rows 1 and 2 in the table below). Because a facility will never report using both methods they may safely be summed without risk of double counting.

Raw water use is reported in the follow ref_ids:

Where the wildcards [1] and [2] represent the water source and facility type which may be any of the following values:

So the raw value for usage of surface water in Raw Material Collection & Bulk Refining for production would be found in either the ref_id wattrackwatsourcesurfaceprodrawMaterialCollectionquant or wattrackwatsourcesurfaceallrawMaterialCollectionquant the former if wattrackdomprodsep is yes and the latter if it is no and, in that case, combined with domestic water use but never both.

Every reported quantity is converted to liters (gal, liter and m3 are the allowed units) in a calculation with the ref_id form wattrack…quant_l.

Water Aggregates

[1]total

Total liters of water across all facility types, and domestic usage from the water source represented by the wild card [1].

domestic_total_water_l

Total liters of water from domestic usage across all sources. Only has a value if the facility reported production and domestic usage separately.

watsourcewithdrawal

Total liters of water across all facility types, and domestic usage from the water sources:

watsourceground
watsourcemunicipalblue
watsourcemunicipalunk

watsourcerecycled

Total liters of water across all facility types, and domestic usage from the water sources:

watsourcemunicipalgrey
watsourcecond
watsourcerecycle
watsourcereuse
watsourcewaste
watsourcewasteinternal

watsourcetotaltotal

Total water use in liters across all sources, facility types, and domestic use.

[2]_water_l

Total liters of water used across all sources for the facility type represented by the wild card [2]. Does not include domestic usage.

[2]_total_water_l

Total liters of water used across all sources for the facility type represented by the wild card [2]. Includes domestic usage divided evenly across the facility’s reported facility types (water_adjusted_facility_type).

[2]_normalized_water_l

Total liters of water used per unit produced across all sources for the facility type represented by the wild card [2]. Includes domestic usage divided evenly across each facility type. The unit total and unit of measure can be found in sipfacilityannualprodvolquant[2] and sipfacilityannualprodvolunits[2] respectively.

Waste Data

Data about waste generation is collected in the Waste section of FEM separated by hazardous and non-hazardous waste type. Unlike energy and water it is not reported by facility type.

Raw waste generation is reported in the follow ref_ids:

Where the wildcard [1] represents the waste stream which may be any of the following values (the reference is the table row name used in the ref_id; the display text of the corresponding answer option may differ slightly):

Waste Aggregates

Waste quantities are converted to kilograms from the reported units (g, kg, lb, oz, tonmetric, tonshort) in calculations with the ref_id form wstsource…quant_kg, and aggregations are provided in the following calculations:

wstsourcetotalnonhaz

Total kilograms of non hazardous waste.

wstsourcetotalhaz

Total kilograms of hazardous waste.

wstsourcetotal

Total kilograms of all waste, both hazardous and non hazardous.