ESG | Co2 FAQ

FAQ – Life Cycle Assessment


1. What is a life cycle assessment?
A Life Cycle Assessment (or LCA) is the calculation of the impact of a product during its lifetime. Most commonly used for CO2 footprint calculations. This life consists of several life cycle phases such as: raw materials, production, packaging, transport, usage, end-of-life/disposal. These ‘life cycle phases’ differ per scope.

2. Does an LCA always have the same scope?

No, an LCA can have various scopes. A scope means that there are certain boundaries you can set within the life cycle. A few examples are:
**cradle to gate: from raw materials to the gate of the factory
**cradle to grave: from raw materials to the disposal of the product by incinerating or landfill
**cradle to cradle: from raw materials to the recycling of a product, returning it to a base material which can be the ‘raw material’ of a new item.
To compare CO2 emissions you will need comparable scopes or be able to compare life cycle phases.
Our LCA is based on Cradle-to-grave because we cannot always guarantee that a product is offered for recycling, or that the country where it is disposed of has sufficient recycling options.

We use two different scopes:
For Iqoniq textiles: our LCA is based on Cradle-to-gate, with more focus on the impactful production phases.
For other products: our LCA is based on Cradle-to-grave because it is not always clear if recycling is offered and different countries have different disposal and recycling options.

3. How do we calculate the CO2 emissions?
For Iqoniq textiles we use a calculation developed by Made2Flow, a company specialized in impact calculations for the textiles and the fashion industry. The use mostly primary source data (directly from the factory) and if that is not available secondary source data (from databases). The methodology is conform ISO14040 standards. Made2Flow focuses on the CO2 calculations of all tiers included in the chain from Production of raw materials to final assembly.

We use a licensed calculation tool that is developed by EcoAct. The methodology of the LCA is based on ISO14067 and is verified by Bureau Veritas, an independent third party auditing and certification agency. Using a licensed tool also means we cannot make any adjustments in the LCA tool ourselves on for example data sets or influence the method of calculation, without involvement of EcoAct.
The phases of the calculation can be found in question 1. What is a Life cycle assessment?

4. What do we use as input?

Depending on the type or product (Iqoniq or not-Iqoniq) we or Made2Flow collect all the relevant data of our products (materials, weight, packaging, origin/destination etc.) which are used to make a calculation. The more accurate information is collected, the more accurate the outcome. In some cases generalized information is used, however based on accepted assumptions. An example of average or generalized data: when ‘usage’ is calculated we cannot know exactly how often every user uses the item. So an accepted average is taken.

5. Where do we show the CO2 information on our website?
We show the CO2 footprint information on several places on our website:
• On the product page
• In a tab on the product page named CO2 Footprint, which explains the methodology
• On the Product PDF sheet
• In the Product comparison sheet.

6. Is printing included in the CO2 footprint?

No, printing is not yet included in the current calculations. The aim is to include this step in the future, but it requires some more research by EcoAct.

7. Why do some products in our collection not have a CO2 footprint?
A small number of products in our collection do not have a CO2 footprint. For the products by Philips, Motorola and Grundig we are not in direct contact with the manufacturer and could not obtain the necessary information to calculate the footprint. We aim of course to find a way to calculate this footprint as well in future.

8. What about Land and Water data?
For the Iqoniq collection we also show the land and water used to produce an item. These are not part of the CO2 calculation but they do have a significant environmental impact.