Do you know how to measure the true cost of your clothes? Read on to learn about Life Cycle Assessments.
We’ll be learning about life cycle assessments (LCAs) on the first day of Africa Textile Talks, Tuesday, 29 July. Days 1 and 2 are sold out, but you can still book tickets for Day 3 on Quicket.
What is an LCA?
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) measures the environmental impact of a product across every stage of its life.
From raw materials to disposal, it helps quantify all the hidden costs of our consumption.
Why use LCAs?
LCAs help us:
- Collect and understand data
- Understand environmental impact
- Make better decisions
They’re usually goal-specific, such as reducing carbon emissions or water use.
Life cycle of clothing
An LCA for fashion considers impact at every stage:
- Raw materials: Growing plants, cultivating land, extracting petrochemicals
- Manufacturing and processing: Spinning, dyeing, sewing
- Transport: This happens between and within each phase
- Retail and use: Includes second-hand resale, as well as washing and dyeing practices
- Waste disposal: Recycling, downcycling, landfill
Cradle-to-cradle thinking
Traditional LCAs assume all products become waste.
But in a circular economy, we design with reuse and recycling in mind. Cradle-to-cradle LCAs close the loop by planning for recycling and re-manufacturing from the start.
What happens next?
LCAs identify leverage points: where can you get the biggest impact for the least effort/money/time?
By identifying leverage points, LCAs help facilitate sustainable decision-making that is intentional and effective.
Comparing apples and oranges
LCA’s are great for aiding decision-making and measuring impact, but not for comparing different fibres.
For example, you shouldn’t use LCA’s to compare cow leather and pleather, as their only similarity is their end use. Their life cycles are too different to accurately compare.
‘Quick and dirty’ LCAs
Some LCAs use industry averages rather than sourcing the actual data. It’s cheaper, faster, and easier, but not accurate. This can be a useful starting point, but only if further data is collected going forward.
This ‘quick and dirty’ LCA is commonplace in fashion, as the industry is known for its opaque and complicated supply chains. Brands may not know exactly where their clothes are coming from or how they are being produced, so they cannot easily access data from suppliers.
LCA limitations
- Can be expensive, time-consuming, and based on assumptions
- Can be used for greenwashing
- Often ignore things that are harder to measure, like social or biodiversity impacts
- Can’t be used to compare products made from different fibres
- Measure one static point in time, rather than long-term progress
The full story
LCA’s can measure and help improve many things: water usage, greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and even water pollution.
But, how do you quantify the social implications of fabric dye in rivers? The wellness of farmers? Loss of local textile industries?
LCAs are a useful tool to help us understand environmental impacts, but we can’t create a fairer fashion future without first considering the human element of our clothing system.
