Join Dr Andrew Hudson, our Managing Director, who will be presenting at the 21st UITIC International Technical Footwear Congress on 22 September 2023, Session 4. The title of the presentation is: A Practical Approach to Assess the Environmental Impact of Footwear using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Principles. Life Cycle Assessments (LCA’s) are a powerful tool by which organisations can assess the environmental impact of an item of footwear in the context of its entire life cycle. Such assessments provide insights into where the major sustainability impacts are and enable targeted and impactful improvement strategies to be developed. However, LCA’s can also be a time-consuming and expensive process which prevents many organisations from undertaking such an exercise. There is also the added complication that different organisations can undertake LCA’s on similar footwear but make variations in their assessment approach which prevents direct comparisons between LCA results. Recognising the limitations in comparing LCA’s, the European Commission has drafted Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) to provide guidance on how the environmental footprint of footwear should be calculated. By defining which life cycle stages and processes should be included in the ‘system boundaries’ for footwear, organisations will be clearer on how to calculate an LCA and comparisons between LCA’s will be easier. In this presentation, insights into LCA’s and PEFCR will be shared along with the author’s assessment of what the industry is doing to measure environmental impacts of its wide variety of footwear styles that contain a large number of components and different materials. Comparisons will be made between systems that either use mainly primary or secondary data and identifying situations when each assessment type can be used. The author will also share practical approaches for organisations to make rapid and low-cost environmental impact assessments based on LCA principles.
For more information on this event, visit the UITIC website
Location:
Milan Congres Centre (Milano, Assago) and Vigevano, Italy
UITIC Italy (uitic-italy2023.com)
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