A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a global analysis of the environmental impacts resulting from a product
during its whole life cycle, that is from the moment of the extraction of raw materials to manufacturing,
transportation and use and finally to the disposal of waste.
The consumptions and emissions of materials and energy for each step of the life cycle are quantified.
These data are then used to proceed to the assessment of a cluster of environmental impacts (energy
consumption, greenhouse effect, exhaustion of natural resources, acidification, quantity of waste produced,
etc...).

So as to facilitate the comparison of different designs of jeans and different uses that can be made of it, a
common reference was introduced to express the materials and energy balance of the system life cycle. This is
the functional unit of the environmental assessment.
The Functional Unit (FU) that has been chosen for this study is the following: « Wear jeans for one day ».
Thanks to this unit of reference, the potential impacts which are generated all through the jeans life cycle can be
assessed for its use for one day, thus taking its lifetime in consideration.

The life cycle assessment of jeans trousers was conducted in accordance with ISO 14040 standards and was peer
reviewed. The following environmental product declaration is compliant with ISO 14025 standards
(environmental labelling of type III).