Sustainability Flashcards
Definition of sustainability including the 3 pillars?
- Sustainable living is taking no more potentially renewable resources form the natural world than can be replenished naturally.
- To not overload the capacity of the environment to cleanse and renew itself by natural processes.
- Resources are sustainable if they cannot be used up
Elements of an ideal sustainable product (5)
- Provide an equivalent function to the product it replaces
- Performs as well as or better than the existing product
- Be available at a competitive or lower price
- Be manufactured from renewable resources
- Use only ingredients that are safe to both humans and the environment
(Business question) Plastics in our oceans
Plastic microfibres are released when synthetic textiles are washed - account for over 1/3rd of all micro-plastics released to oceans.
Over 700,000 individual microfibres released from an average 6kg wash
What is the lifecycle analysis (LCA)?
It is important to consider the whole life of a product to assess its environmental impact.
LCA is an integrated “cradle to grave” approach to assess the environmental performance of products and services.
It is an analysis of the complex interaction between a product and the environment
What are the 2 main steps in a LCA?
- Describe the emissions that occur and raw materials used during the life of a product - referred to as the inventory step
- Assess impacts of emissions and raw materials depletions - referred to as the impact assessment step
Context behind the ‘problems with cotton’ case study? (7 points)
Natural doesn’t necessarily mean sustainable
Cotton production is over 25 million tonnes p/a
1kg of cotton fibre requires 20,000 - 40,000 litres
High levels of pesticides (25% world total) and insecticides (11% world total)
Only grows in certain climates
Deforestation is performed to grow cotton
Organic cotton not a viable option on a global scale
Describe organic cotton (case study) - 6 points
Global production (in over 20 countries, mainly India) is only 1.1% of world cotton production
Must wait 3 years for land to be ‘organic’
Only genetically unmodified seed
No herbicides or pesticides
Ethical labour employment standards must be met
Has very high water consumption
What are the organic cotton challenges (case study)? - 6 points
Limited organic insecticides Lower yields, crop dependent Yields more variable Higher water usage Labour availability Higher labour cost for hand weeding
What is better cotton and why? (case study)
It is a genetically modified pest-resistant strain referred to as ‘Bt cotton’
It contains a naturally occurring protein (used by organic gardeners) that kills bollworm pests (moth larva)
This reduces the amount of insecticide needed to control pests from 5 sprays to 0
This wipes out the need to use it and the poisoning of workers is virtually eliminated
Reduced costs in reduced use of insecticides
May reduce the presence of bollworm on other host crops as a result and may decrease the need for insecticide sprays in general
It is a more productive product although it is regarded as ‘less natural’ and cannot be classed as ‘organic’
What are some major sustainable fibre types (case study)?
Bast fibres (flax, hemp, jute, ramie, kenaf, nettle)
Regenerated cellulosic (lyocell, modal)
Wool
Describe Econyl and its benefits by Aquafil (business example per question 2)
Econyl is a nylon fabric made from discarded fishing nets, fabric scraps and other waste
Produced by a chemical recycling process in which the plastic waste raw material is chemically broken down to its building blocks before being re-polymerised back into nylon
Performs as well as conventional nylon and is indistinguishable
Can be recycled again and again
Leads to reductions of over 50% in CO2 equivalent emissions
Prada plans to substitute all its nylon with Econyl by late 2021
It functions just like traditional nylon during both manufacturing and wear
High level of traceability - sourcing and production processes publicly available
Disadvantage of Econyl (1)
The basic cost is higher than virgin nylon by about 15-20%
