How can I include overproduction as an avoided emission

Question

I am working with a company that is trying to disrupt the fashion industry by (among other things) to lower the lead time from when garment is being produced to when it is sold (current 9 months). The new company produces the garment in the moment it is being sold to avoid overproduction. It is estimated that the fashion industry today each year is destroying 45 B garments due unsold items.

How can I include overproduction in my assessment of avoided emissions (Scope 4) via LCA complying with leading standards (ISO 14040, GHG protocol and Project Frame)?  

Thanks  

Answer 1

Interesting - I guess there are several possibilities, a simple one would be to say "your t-shirt" can be compared to 1+x conventional t-shirts, x being overproduction? You can also just calculate emissions (and resource use?) for x conventional overproduction t-shirts.

Comments

thanks ;-) I will follow you advise and make a conservative estimate on overproduction now and how it is expected to decrease in the future.

Answer 2

Thanks a lot - I have made the following justification: In alignment with ISO 14044 is it possible to claim the current overproduction of garment as a co-product through system expansion and substitution.

System expansion means expanding the product system to include additional functions related to the co-products, which can be a means of avoiding allocation. In practice, this can involve comparing co-products to other substitutable products, and the environmental burdens associated with the substituted product(s) are subtracted from the product system under study. This concept might be applied to the case of overproduction by considering the environmental impacts of the unsold products as co-products.