What are the impact indicators?

Introduction to BCome’s environmental impact indicators

To measure a product’s environmental footprint, we focus on four key impact indicators. Think of them as categories on an environmental report card, each one telling a crucial part of the story.

We’ve selected these four because they are highly relevant for the fashion industry, giving you a clear and actionable picture of a product’s impact from cradle to gate.

Water scarcity

• What it measures: The stress a product’s creation places on local water resources. It considers both the amount of water used and the level of water stress in that specific region.
• Unit: m³ water eq. (Cubic meters of water equivalent). This unit reflects the impact of water consumption. For example, using 100 liters of water in a drought-prone area has a much higher impact score than using the same amount in a water-rich region.
• Methodology: AWARE. Recommended by the European Commission, this “gold standard” method evaluates water use impact by comparing the local demand for water (by humans and ecosystems) against its availability.
• Why it’s important for fashion: Natural fibers like cotton are famously thirsty crops, and textile dyeing and finishing processes also consume vast amounts of water.

Global warming

• What it measures: A product’s total contribution to climate change. This is often called its carbon footprint. Global warming is caused by the greenhouse effect of heat-trapping pollutants. The greenhouse effect is the absorption of sunlight and solar radiation by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor. Instead of escaping into space, the heat is kept for years to centuries in the Earth’s atmosphere.
• Unit: kg CO₂ eq. (Kilograms of Carbon Dioxide equivalent). This single unit converts the impact of all different greenhouse gases (like methane and nitrous oxide) into the equivalent amount of CO₂. It’s like converting multiple currencies into dollars to easily compare their value.
• Methodology: IPCC 2023. We use the most recent data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science, ensuring our calculations are up-to-date and accurate.
• Why it’s important for fashion: The industry relies on energy-intensive manufacturing processes and global shipping, both of which produce significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Eutrophication (Freshwater)

• What it measures: The pollution of freshwater ecosystems by excess nutrients, mainly from phosphorus and nitrogen compounds. These nutrients cause harmful algal blooms that deplete oxygen, creating “dead zones” and harming aquatic life.
• Unit: kg P eq. (Kilograms of Phosphorus equivalent). This unit measures the potential of all different nutrient emissions to cause eutrophication, expressing their combined impact as the equivalent amount of phosphorus.
• Methodology: EUTREND model within the ReCiPe framework. We use the EUTREND model (Struijs et al., 2009), a robust method for modeling nutrient fate, as implemented in the comprehensive ReCiPe framework. ReCiPe is a widely respected scientific method for Life Cycle Impact Assessment that provides consistent and reliable results.
• Why it’s important for fashion: Fertilizer runoff from agriculture (e.g., growing cotton) and chemical discharges from textile wet processing (dyeing and finishing) are major causes of freshwater pollution.

Abiotic depletion

• What it measures: The consumption of non-renewable fossil fuel resources, such as oil, natural gas, and coal.
• Unit: MJ (Megajoules). This is a standard unit of energy, directly reflecting the amount of fossil fuel energy extracted and used.
• Methodology: CML-IA baseline. A robust and widely used scientific method for assessing the depletion of finite natural resources.
• Why it’s important for fashion: Synthetic fibers like polyester and nylon are made directly from fossil fuels. The entire industry also relies heavily on fossil fuels for energy in manufacturing plants and for global transportation.