Woven Image is an international textile design company specialising in textiles for commercial interiors, including offices, hotels, restaurants, airports and theatres. Woven Image are working with Edge Environment to integrate life cycle thinking across their supply chain.
First out, Woven Image selected the EchoPanel product ranges for life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify opportunities to improve environmental performance. EchoPanel is an office partitioning and wall covering product made from 60% post consumer recycled PET.
Edge Environment used the recently launched BPIC methodology to conduct the LCA and subsequently worked with ecospecifier to have the products certified to ecospecifier global GreenTag(TM)* standard.
The LCA included a broad range of impacts from cradle to grave LCA of the EchoPanel, from basic material extraction and processing; supply chain transport and packaging; end use and maintenance; to recycling and reuse of materials and products at the end of use.
One of Woven Image’s goals with the LCA is to inform their product design with life cycle thinking, and address the aspects of the supply chain that were contributing most to their environmental footprint. Edge Environment used the ecopoints method to establish a map of overall environmental footprint of the product as a way to communicate the study results. The purpose of the map is to provides a high-level picture of where the environmental hotspots are over the product life cycle to inform Woven Image’s environmental improvement strategy.
Figure: Overall environmental impact measured in ecopoints, from cradle to site, for Woven Image’s EchoPanel
The LCA study helped Woven Image identify that the greatest opportunity to reduce the environmental footprint of the EchoPanel was to further develop their existing product stewardship scheme. Woven Image not only offer take back of EchoPanel product at the end of life but will soon announce a range of EchoPanels where it has been reintroduced it into the production process. This was one of a list of prioritised recommendations were Woven Image have the greatest opportunities to reduce its impact.
The LCA report referenced in this article was conducted in accordance with the international LCA standards ISO 14040/44 and the Australian Life Cycle Inventory (AusLCI) guidelines, in addition to BPIC’s Building Products LCI toolkit and protocol. The LCA report was submitted to ecospecifier as part of the EchoPanel ecospecifier global GreenTag(TM) certification which met all the requirements for GreenRate Level A certification. EchoPanel is currently under LCARate Assessment to determine the final GreenTag Tier to be awarded.
Woven Image website can be viewed at www.wovenimage.com
Please contact Tom Davies to learn more about Edge’s eco-labelling and LCA services.
* GreenTag is a registered Trade Mark of Ecospecifier Pty Ltd