Life Cycle Assessment: A Complete Breakdown of a Textile

Life cycle analysis: owe often talk about the environmental impact of a garment, a utensil, a decoration… We understand the concept, but in practice, how do you distinguish between two objects with the same function? How do you choose which areas to improve first to minimize the impact? In response to these important questions, a tool has been developed to provide answers, life cycle analysis or LCA.

What is LCA?

Life cycle analysis, or LCA, is a multi-criteria, multi-stage assessment technique. Its objective is to assess the environmental aspects and environmental impacts of a product or service, according to the ISO 14044 standard, compared to a situation where it would not exist.

The life cycle

LCA analyzes the entire life cycle of the product or service concerned. The life cycle refers to a set of phases ranging from design to disposal and consists of 5 phases:

Raw materials: extraction, processing, supply
Manufacturing: assembly, packaging, construction
Distribution: marketing, delivery
Use: consumption, maintenance
End of life: collection, transport, recycling, waste treatment

For each of these life stages, the incoming and outgoing flows associated with the product are accounted for and linked to environmental impacts. Thus, all potential impacts on the environment and resource consumption are studied, from the extraction of raw materials to waste treatment - this is a so-called "cradle-to-grave" LCA.

Use

A life cycle analysis allows any individual or company

to identify opportunities to improve environmental performance at different stages of the life cycle
to make a relevant comparison between different products or services of the same type
to adapt their choices or strategy accordingly
to identify eco-design opportunities
to move towards a more environmentally friendly production process.

More generally, LCA allows us to meet the following needs:

R&D: develop more sustainable products (eco-design approach)
Procurement: find suppliers with a lower environmental impact
Customers: meet customer demand for environmental responsibility
Management: integrate sustainability into decision-making and the company's development strategies

Certification

LCA is a procedure, that is, a series of standardized steps; it is recognized and used internationally by the scientific community, private stakeholders, and policymakers. It is governed by the ISO 14044 standard. It is particularly recommended because it is the only standardized environmental assessment methodology applicable to all economic sectors.

© Céline Berthaut for ecoresponsable.numerique.gouv.fr

Process

Life cycle analysis is an iterative process consisting of 4 steps:

1 - Define the objectives and scope of the study

In this step, the goal is to define the framework of the life cycle analysis of the system under study. This involves defining what we want to analyze, how we want to analyze it, and how far we want to go with our analysis. We need to determine:

The objectives of the study as well as the final goal
The product under study and its function
The recipient of the study
The functional unit of the product under study (the unit of measurement used to make comparisons, determining the evaluation of the service provided by the product)
The reference flow (the quantity of product required to fulfill the function)
The boundaries and limits of the system under study

2 - Conduct the inventory and quantification of incoming and outgoing flows

The life cycle inventory measures the incoming and outgoing flows of materials and energy to understand the environmental impact of each stage.

Incoming flows correspond to all resources involved in the manufacturing process of a product or service (raw materials, water, oil, gas…)
Outgoing flows correspond to everything that results from this process, in terms of negative externalities and impacts of various natures (gas emissions, liquid waste…)

3 - Estimate the environmental impacts of all flows

In this step, the flow inventory is translated into environmental impacts using software modeling. Impact calculation methods are divided into two categories: midpoint methods and endpoint methods.

Midpoint methods quantify the overall effects of the substances emitted or consumed. These risks may affect human health, ecosystems…
Endpoint methods continue the modeling through the entire cause-effect chain. They assess the potential damage caused by the substances emitted or consumed.

4 - Interpret the results

The final step of the life cycle analysis is the assessment. The results are interpreted, analyzed, and compared to the objectives. This allows us to:

identify areas for improvement in environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of the product
compare different scenarios by impact type
turn to less polluting alternatives

Advantages and limitations of LCA

The methodology of life cycle analysis is essential for product assessment, although it does not claim to cover all dimensions and all complexities of systems.

Advantages

LCA offers several well-known advantages:

It allows for the consideration of impact transfers between different environmental issues or life cycle stages.
It can be applied to a wide range of objectives and at different stages of the design of a product
It allows us to compare two systems that have environmental impacts of different natures (provided they have the same function and functional unit).
It is transparent: the study report requires all hypotheses and data used to be documented.

Limitations

Even though LCA is a powerful tool, it faces certain limitations that are important to identify:

The modeling can be complex, due to a lack of available data in databases
It is very difficult to accurately collect the entirety of the incoming and outgoing flows of a life cycle
It does not allow us to study all environmental impacts, some of which cannot be calculated (microplastics, landscape impact, light or visual pollution, odors, noise, waves…)

It is possible to address these aspects using complementary tools.

From LCA to the eco-score at Meanwhile Boutique

In practice, the goal of an LCA is to encourage companies to move towards eco-design - that is, the integration of environmental issues into the design and development of products or services marketed. The objective is to reduce negative environmental impacts for a product or service that is at least equivalent. This implies combining ecological, social, technical, and economic requirements. LCA also highlights the environmental choices of companies and becomes a comparative tool for consumers.

Thus, working from the results of a life cycle analysis is a way to contribute to the protection of the environment, while preserving the functionality, quality, and performance of its offering.

At Meanwhile Boutique, we have had an LCA carried out on three of our textile products, which were thus assigned an eco-score to better inform our customers.

The eco-score of our products:

Our white "eco-friendly & happy" t-shirt

Environmental labeling White EcoFriendly & Happy T-shirt Meanwhile Boutique

More information about the eco-score of this t-shirt here or via the label above

Our upcycled denim jacket

More information about the eco-score of this jacket here or via the label above

Our organic cotton tote bag

environmental impact of the Meanwhile Boutique tote bag

organic cotton tote bag from Meanwhile Boutique

Our watermelon half-moon bag

watermelon half moon bag Meanwhile Boutique

The blue organic cotton tank top

And that's just the beginning! We encourage all the companies we work with to calculate the eco-score of their textile products and promote environmental labeling. But how do you really decipher a textile? And, in practice, what are environmental labeling and the eco-score?

Answers here, in the second part of this article.

Discover all our eco-responsible textile products

Sources:

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): A Complete Breakdown of a Textile