The product care section allows users to account for the use impacts associated with apparel and home textile products. Footwear products are assumed to have no product care impacts.
Product care impacts are determined by the product category as well as the fabric category. Product categories are selected when first creating a new product to be assessed, so users only need to choose the fabric category in this section. There are four fabric categories that can be selected from, but not all product categories will have all four options available. A default selection is always provided and should be used if the fabric category is unknown. For products that do not have a majority fabric category, the default selection should remain unchanged.
The following four fabric categories are available:
- Cotton is the default typical care scenario for most product categories. It should be selected when the product is made from a majority (greater than 50%) of cotton or cellulosic materials such as linen, hemp, viscose, modal, lyocell, acetate, or others.
- Synthetic should be selected when the product is made from a majority (greater than 50%) of synthetic materials such as polyester, nylon, polypropylene, elastane, or others.
- Wool should be selected when the product is made from a majority of animal protein fibers, such as sheep wool or alpaca wool.
- Delicate should be selected for all products that require delicate care such as cold-water wash only, hand wash only, or dry clean only.
Alternative Care
This section allows users to create their own care scenarios to understand the potential impacts of different types of consumer use. Alternate care scenarios cannot be used for consumer facing claims.
Users can customize the following fields:
Wearings / Wash is the number of times a customer would use a product before washing it. Note that each use is one day’s equivalent use (Examples: t-shirt worn for one day; dress shirt worn to the office once; running shirt used for one run)
The following wash settings can be selected:
- Machine Wash Hot
- Machine Wash Warm
- Machine Wash Cold
- Hand Wash
- Hand/Spot Clean
- Dry Clean
- No Washing
The following drying settings can be selected:
- Line/air dry
- Machine dry
- No drying
The following ironing settings can be selected:
- No ironing
- Ironing (average temperature)
- Ironing (low temperature)
- Ironing (high temperature)