Publications and media
Sustainable consumption should not be reduced to reuse and recycling, according to SIFO researchers. Imagine that your phone is getting progressively slower. Rather than you buying a new phone, the retailer offers you new software and a new battery, making the phone in your hand almost new again. Or that your sofa has become stained […]
Article published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment demonstrates that increasing the lifespan of a garment by wearing it longer had the largest effect for decreasing the environmental impacts. A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare six plausible best and worst-case practice scenarios for use and care of a wool […]
This article explores drivers and barriers for repair from consumers’ and commercial repair actors’ viewpoints. It aims to understand how the repair rates of household appliances, mobile phones and clothing could be increased. Increasing product lifespans is one of the most effective environmental strategies and therefore repair is a part of the circular economy approach […]
This is the question we discuss in our most recent article in Sustainability entitled: What Affects Garment Lifespans? International Clothing Practices Based on a Wardrobe Survey in China, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. Clothing lifespans have been measured in three different ways, how long (years), how many times (wears) and by how many […]
Abstract: Clothing maintenance is necessary for keeping clothing and textiles functional and socially acceptable, but it has environmental consequences due to the use of energy, water and chemicals.This article discusses whether clothes made of different materials are cleaned in different ways and have different environmental impacts. It fills a knowledge gap needed in environmental assessments […]
Clothing Lifespans: What Should Be Measured and How Increasing the use of each product, most often called longer lifespans, is an effective environmental strategy. This article discusses how garment lifespans can be described in order to be measured and compared. It answers two sub-questions: (1) what to measure (units), and (2) how to measure (methods). […]