WSP Develops Life Cycle Assessment Tool for Tapestry

In its efforts to reduce the amount of waste in its production practices, Tapestry and its iconic Coach brand introduced life cycle assessment (LCA) to production of its new sub-brand of “Coachtopia” products earlier this spring.

To work toward this goal, Tapestry and the Coach brand collaborated with WSP to find practical ways to reduce the carbon and waste footprint of this new product line using LCA and creating a bespoke tool. This tool — the Tapestry Environmental Product Impact Calculator (T-EPIC) — compares the carbon and waste impacts of Coachtopia products to that of hypothetical baseline products made only from virgin materials. The tool is currently being used for Coachtopia products with the opportunity and goal to assess products from other Tapestry brands.

“What we’ve done with Tapestry is work to collect all of the data that we can from their supply chain, including their cut and sew factories, textile mills and distribution centers to look at all the materials that go into how Coachtopia products get made, packaged and shipped,” said Isaac Emery, project director at WSP. “We then use all of that information to create carbon and waste footprints for each product in the brand.”

Coachtopia is a line of nearly 100 products — bags, accessories, fashion, and footwear — that are made mostly with waste leather or partially recycled materials like cotton, resin, or polyester.

The company has spent recent years researching how to embrace more circular business models that focus on minimizing the use of resources and making products easier to recycle and reuse. That research led them to recognize the importance of understanding the life of its products beyond manufacturing and sales practices.

“Tapestry’s partnership with WSP to create T-EPIC has been a significant milestone in our accelerated efforts to create a more responsible business model that aims to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of our products and quantify the total weight of waste diverted from landfill to create them,” said Logan Duran, VP of ESG & Sustainability at Tapestry. “In the tool’s initial phase, we’re focusing on calculating and evaluating the impact of Coachtopia products, but we have a great opportunity to use this tool to evaluate the impact of products across our house of brands.”

An LCA is typically conducted to evaluate the environmental impacts for a specific product or production site, such as the carbon or water footprints or water or air pollution over the product or system’s whole life cycle (including raw materials, transportation, use phase and end-of-life.)

“It’s similar to product studies we’ve done in the past,” Emery continued. “But in this case, we’ve built a tool that uploads all materials for the whole product line, and we basically analyze the carbon footprint for all of them at once.”

According to Julie Sinistore, vice president at WSP, Tapestry ultimately decided to work with WSP on this project because of the firm’s prior success working with other manufacturers — including fashion apparel clients — on LCAs.

“It's a good demonstration of our ability to provide LCA and sustainability services for our clients, and in this case, it’s a great combination for us to show both our LCA experience and our experience with apparel clients,” Sinistore said. WSP recently joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. 

Throughout this process, WSP has worked closely with Tapestry and Coach to answer questions about the information this tool has collected and provide them with what’s essentially a set of “best practices” for how to publicly communicate this information.

When it comes to LCA, data collection presents its own host of challenges. But that only multiplies when the overall scope of the assessment is expanded to a whole line of products.

“The point of building T-EPIC was that we could do not just one LCA, which in itself has many data requirements, but to conduct dozens of LCAs simultaneously,” Emery said. “It’s a significantly different method of data collection, with even larger purchase lists from suppliers that we needed to extract useful information from.”

Throughout this complicated process, Emery said the Coach and Tapestry teams have been very supportive and open while going through all the necessary steps.

“The Coach and Tapestry teams have been a really great partner in working to understand all of this with us,” he said. “They’re very responsive and active in making sure that they get us what we need and understand why we need it. It’s been nice to work with their team through this.”

Accountability and Transparency in Carbon Footprint Data

James Cooper, project director at WSP, said tools like this help set a benchmark for transparency in carbon footprint data disclosure and promote circular business models.

“I think this can become a leading model on how circularity can really make an impact and be quite successful,” Cooper said. “It’s also about accountability and transparency through critical review, which goes above board to build trust with consumers and the public.”

T-EPIC is also a demonstration of what WSP can provide for Future Ready®-minded clients seeking to reduce their carbon footprint throughout the entire life cycle of their products.

“This is not a cookie-cutter tool that can just be applied to other clients’ supply chains, but through this process, we’ve now built a sort of fundamental architecture that can be used to create similar tools for other businesses,” Sinistore said.

Editor’s note: Check these links to learn more about:

• Coachtopia line – https://www.coach.com/shop/coachtopia
• WSP’s collaborative work with Coach –  https://www.coach.com/coachtopia/about/partners
• Tapestry – https://www.tapestry.com/
• Data sources and documentation of the tool –  https://www.coach.com/on/demandware.static/-/Sites/default/product-impact-calculator.pdf

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