End-of-life (EoL) in LCA: Impacts of Waste and Benefits of Recycling
The End-of-Life (EoL) is the 5th product life-cycle phase in LCA: it’s the “grave”. Frightful (at first sight) as its name implies, this phase causes emissions and frowning faces alike. It has two main challenges: 1. How do you find out what happens to your product after it’s discarded? 2. How do you account for […]
Cradle-to-Gate in LCA: What Is It and How Does It Work?
Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) following “Cradle-to-Gate” – measure a product’s environmental footprint up to the point where it leaves the factory gate. This means the environmental footprint results don’t include the footprint of product use by customers and its end-of-life processes (waste/recycling/upcycling). Cradle-to-gate simplifies and speeds up the LCA process. This is handy in certain […]
How to Use LCA for Credible Environmental Claims
Customers increasingly want sustainable products. Companies are therefore eager to “put on a green shirt” and market vague sustainability claims- but only some of them are actually changing their behavior. The only way for customers to check which companies are better for the environment is by looking behind the green facade: i.e. asking for environmental […]
Key Learnings From 3 Sustainable Apparel Frontrunners
Sometimes, learning about sustainable apparel is like going to school again. And like in school, there are those straight-A students that blurt out the answers while you still try to understand the question. What answers do MUD jeans, Patagonia, and MATE the label frontrunners have regarding sustainable apparel? Fancy a peek at their homework? In this […]
Beginners Guide: 6 Steps to Create Sustainable Apparel
Extensive water use and- pollution, worker exploitation, microplastic, CO2 emissions… The apparel industry has faced increasing criticism over the past years. Fashion is getting a bad name and customers demand “sustainable” products. But making sustainable apparel products isn’t easy. What criticism should you focus on? What kind of impact do your products actually have on […]
Primary vs. Secondary Data: What’s The Best In LCA?
To make an LCA of your product(s) you need data. Think of the energy usage for your manufacturing and waste processes, data on your purchased & used raw materials, etc. Much data can be found in your own finance or purchase department. But with supply chain data (e.g. purchased raw materials) it’s trickier. How do you get […]
The Data You Need For a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a scientific method to measure the environmental footprint of a product. The result: 15+ impact outcomes. But before you can measure, you need information on your product. Think of data on your usages & emissions, utilities, transport, materials, etc. That’s why the first step in measuring LCA’s is Data Collection. Data […]
5 Key Questions to Get Started With Biodiversity and Business
Biodiversity is a hot topic for businesses. Companies have a growing awareness of their relation with ecosystems: they have an impact on ecosystems and they are dependent on resources from those ecosystems. We also see more and more organizations ‘quantify’ their biodiversity impacts enabling them to start managing the impact. But the domain is also […]
Ecochain is ISO 27001 & 9001 certified: Here’s What That Means
ISO 27001 – Confidentiality, integrity & availability of all data The ISO 27001 norm specifies the norm for Information Security Management System (ISMS). Ecochain’s ISMS is made up of a wide range of security measures. These proactively limit the likelihood or impact of data security breaches or disruptions in the software operations. Its purpose: Ensuring […]
How Activity-Based Footprinting Solves the Complexity of LCA’s
‘An LCA is a complex analysis’ Life Cycle Assessments* (LCA) are, by nature, extensive pieces of research. Only trained experts can create reliable assessments that go to the bottom of complex processes and value chains. At least, that’s the common perception. *An LCA is a scientific analysis of the impact one object or process has […]
