Water Resources and Industry (Dec 2022)
Data envelopment analysis as a tool to assess the water demand minimization potential in industrial zones in the Vietnamese Delta
Abstract
This work employs the data envelopment analysis technique to assess the water use efficiency of companies and the water reduction potential of industrial categories in industrial zones. Fifty-eight companies were selected from four industrial categories: wearing apparel (WA,18), fabricated metal (FM,12), rubber and plastic (RP,12), and other manufacturing (OM,12) based on six variables: monthly water usage, two types of effluent contaminant loadings, monthly production capacity, number of employees, and surface occupied by a company. The results indicate that significant numbers of companies are inefficient in water use, namely WA(28%), OM(42%), FM(43%), and RP(46%). Implementing technical measures to improve water use efficiency at these companies offers a varying water reduction potential per industrial category, namely in the order RP(25%) > FM(17%) ≫ WA(7%) > OM(4%). These results show that improving water efficiency by water use minimization is not the only ptential measure for improving the industrial zone's water metabolism towards self-sufficiency.
