This time around we wanted to share with you an insight into what we learnt about our T-shirts after undergoing a Life Cycle Analysis.

We’re pretty happy with the results and think they set us on solid ground, but consistency and improvement will play a big role in how we build from here.

But first up, what even is an LCA..?

LCA stands for Life Cycle Analysis. It’s an in-depth look at a product and it’s supply chain. Here you can gauge what the impact and consequences are of any product you create. It’s a big step in the beginning to understand what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.

In our eyes, performing an LCA on your product is an essential decision to make. Within an LCA, an external party takes a look at:

• The environmental and social impact of your product
• Raw material extraction
• The production process
• Packaging
• Transport
• End of life

Who did we do our LCA with?

We picked a company called True Cost Label to perform the LCA on our T-shirts. TCL is a digital platform that aims to make it simple to buy and sell ethical and sustainably produced fashion. Their mission is to translate complicated data into simple facts to encourage more informed decisions that involve less pollution and fairer working conditions.

We’re on board with that!

So our Tee’s got put under the microscope… what did it tell us?

To start, we split our product category, simply because one of our Tee’s - the Grey Melange - goes through a spin dying process which has some significant benefits. & FYI, the comparison Tee was made in China using commodity trade mix cotton. This is considered to be ‘Industry Standard’ by True Cost Label.

All in all, pretty great going, which is useful to know considering we talk about sustainability all the time. With the future in mind, TCL were helpful enough to give us directions on where we can improve.

Transparency

Identifying more clearly where our root material is sourced can allow us to generate clearer insight on the production standards and social conduct of our supply chain.

Climate Change

As seen, the spin-dye process has some big benefits. Research should be done to see whether this process can be applied to other colour ways and products in the future, as it would allow us to further reduce our impact.

Transport

Although we try to keep things local to Europe, our product still travels crazy distances - enough to travel halfway around the earth’s equator! Localising our supply chain even further, if possible, could have dramatic positive impact.

So, if you didn’t know, now you do.

A big thank you to True Cost Label for lending us their time, expertise and helping us visualise where we’re at and where we should be going. It’s a decent start, but when you compare yourself against the trash currently being slung on high streets globally, big improvements should be the bare minimum.

The only way from here is up.

If you have any questions regarding our LCA or our products, feel free to reach out.

And if you’re a sustainability superstar - go for the grey!

Love,

Team Full Circle