Environmental and Social Responsibility in Textiles: How are we doing?
Product Lifecycle Assessment
It is widely quoted in business that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. You may or may not agree. However, I’d challenge anyone to fully understand, and subsequently manage, the impact of a product on the environment without first undertaking a full product lifecycle assessment. Only when this has been done can a company take a view and prioritise its responsibilities to the environment.
Product Lifecycle Assessment provides a framework for measuring a product’s impact on the environment. It creates data which can be used to facilitate decisions, and is best undertaken with a specific goal in mind – such as understanding how to make a more sustainable product.
Who needs it?
Anyone involved in manufacturing products, with an awareness of their environmental and social responsibilities, needs product lifecycle assessments (PLAs). Examples include people involved in:
- research and development;
- product development;
- supply chain management;
- sales and marketing; and
- strategic planning.
Cradle to grave
The main steps of a product lifecycle, sometimes referred to as “cradle to grave”, to be considered during an assessment, are:
- raw material extraction;
- manufacturing and processing;
- transportation;
- usage; and
- waste disposal.
Where to start
Product lifecycle assessment can be broken down into the following phases, according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO):
- definition of goal and scope;
- inventory analysis;
- impact assessment; and
- interpretation.
For further details and an illustration supplied by EcoChain Technologies, based on the lifecycle assessment of a t-shirt, click here.
What next?
Once a company has assessed the impact of its products and activities on the environment, it can then identify and prioritise the areas which need improvements. There may be associated costs – but the assessment may also reveal opportunities to reduce production costs, because a company which uses fewer resources and less energy may actually reduce its costs. So, everyone’s a winner!