Life Cycle Assessment of the Eco-design of a baby cotton clothes line in Chile

In the search for solutions to imbalance in the current production development, the company Belu decided to carry out an environmental assessment of its basic line of baby clothes through a life cycle analysis (LCA) to extract information that will enable it to eco-design a new line of baby clothes with lower environmental impacts.

The eco-design is a methodology in which a designer relies on scientific data generated by a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to make decisions in the development of a new product.

The objective of this project was to create a line of multi-size eco-designed clothing, i.e., with mechanisms that allow its expansion and adaptation to the baby's growth, for a longer use, reducing its environmental impacts with respect to the basic line. The objective of the LCA was to determine the environmental impacts of dressing a baby in cotton clothes for one year.

The comparisons between clothes lines were made around a functional unit, in other words, the set of garments needed to dress a baby in cotton clothes for a year.

First, the environmental impacts of the basic garments were analyzed to extract information to feed the design of eco-designed garments, it showed that cotton contributed 84% of the environmental impacts, making this material the priority when it comes to eco-designing clothing. In addition, metal fasteners and airplane shipment contributed 7% of the environmental impacts.

The findings showed that the eco-designed garments reduce the environmental impact of dressing a baby during a year by 28% average. This was mainly due to the reduced use of materials (specially cotton) and the extension of the product's lifetime.

In the LCA report, the conclusion and recommendations were included based on the assessment's findings.

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Part of the marketing campaign created for Belu by EcoEd.