Integration of customer profiles in LCAs. A study of their influence on pull-over lifespan

The clothing industry is always mentioned among the most polluting industries. The reduction of this environmental burden has been a concern and a subject of research for many years. One of the tools used for these researches is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. This methodology showed researchers that there was another phase of the life cycle that needed research and optimization: the use phase. The definition and study of the use phase is a combination of engineering (to define the washing machines used and their impacts) and social sciences (to define how the customer used these machines). Furthermore garments were also a subject of interest for social science researchers. They studied the behaviors of people towards their garments, why they kept or dispose of them, etc. This paper explores how the customer can be defined and characterized to define a more precise LCA for garments. First a population sample is characterized into different customer profiles through a self-completing survey. The profiles are defining the content of a pull over use phase and added to multiple LCAs. In a second phase a module of product repair is added to the use phase and weighted according to the customer profiles. The potential benefits of this approach are then discussed as well as the current limitation of the study.