Levi's makes life-cycle assessment part of its fabric

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) tools began increasing in popularity a few years ago as sustainability-minded companies sought ways not only to better understand their products and mitigate their impacts, but also to communicate their efforts to consumers. These tools are data management systems that help companies measure and track the impacts of products from the design stage to end-of-life.

Rather than using ready-made LCA software, companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. began building their own proprietary tools to enable them to better measure their unique inputs, outputs and impacts. (In Levi's case, it commissioned PE Americas to conduct the original lifecycle-analysis study -- led by Thomas P. Gloria -- of a Levi’s 501 jean and Dockers Khaki back in 2007. Since then, Levi's has worked with Gloria, now owner of Industrial Ecology Consultants, to develop and evolve the Evaluate tool.) 

Now Levi's is working to take LCA out of the sustainability silo and into the design room. The company's clothing designers are using its Evaluate tool on a daily basis to make decisions about things like fabric choices, washes and dyes.

"As designers, we only know what we know and so often the decisions we make about what we design and the materials we use are made absent of understanding the environmental impacts of those choices," says Paul Dillinger, senior director of global design for Levi's Dockers brand.

Dillinger and his team can use Evaluate to reach down to the material level to assess the impacts of various components. The design group recently went through the process of evaluating "chassis" fabrics -- core fabrics from which a line is made -- and were able to use Evaluate for the first time to help make design decisions.

"Typically we evaluate fabrics with respect to quality, price, and versatility, but do we know that they're sustainably made?" Dillinger explains. "Have they been woven, spun, dyed in ways that are appropriate? Before Evaluate had no insight into that. Now we have 16 core fabrics we'll put through the tool to further hone the assortment -- so all that information will be available to us prior to the design process. Rather than audit our choices later, this gives us a chance to start off with the right fabrics."

Other examples and the rest of the article is available at Green Biz