CSR Professionals Might Look at LCA for T-Shirt Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles

CSR professionals evaluating product life cycle assessments (LCA) for their own company's products might be interested in taking a peek at Anvil Knitwear's own that was released this week. The company's AnvilSustainable(TM) t-shirt is created from recycled PET plastic bottles and transitional cotton. The transitional cotton used by the company is grown in farms that are in the process of converting to organic production.

Working in partnership with worldwide developer of clean energy and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions reduction Camco International, the current LCA is the fourth they've conducted on various other products. CSR managers may be interested in learning that in the company's cradle-to-grave strategy for AnvilSustainable t-shirt, the footprint is estimated to be 3.29 kgCO2e per t-shirt. And this particular t-shirt sports a 15% lower footprint than the company's conventional cotton ones. Each AnvilSustainable t-shirt saves about 3 plastic bottles from ending up in the landfill.

A practice that's becoming more commonplace in companies with CSR initiatives is incorporating web sites (some interactive, some not) that offer customers an opportunity to either track the life cycle and carbon footprint of a company's products, or a way for the customer to track a product of his own. In the case of Anvil, they've included an interactive web presence that educates consumers on tracking the carbon footprint of their clothing from creation to end. You can check it out here. It's quite a clever presentation. The graphics are engaging (the music didn't wow my socks off; but then again, this is meant to be an educational and interactive experience about the processes it takes for your t-shirt to reach you, not a music venue). You'll have a chance to see where the seeds start and the steps that it takes to get that t-shirt to you. Along the way, you'll also find educational insights on the amount of cotton that's needed to make one t-shirt to what happens at the distribution center and beyond. Definitely worth watching. Corporate social responsibility managers and employees who are contemplating demonstrating their own products' carbon footprint or giving customers and prospects a peek at all the steps involved from cradle to grave might pick up some good ideas. Besides, it's interesting.

Anvil's LCA on AnvilSustainable was done employing a recently developed framework that's part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative. By using the Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standards as well as the Scope 3--corporate value chain--Accounting and Reporting Standard, the company was able to include methods that are able to account for product-specific emissions across both life cycles and their supply chains. For inquiring CSR managers, both new greenhouse gas emissions' protocol standards were developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

CSR managers who want to review Anvil Knitwear's summaries of its product LCAs can find them here.