IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v16y2024i14p6094-d1436744.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environmental Impact of Footwear Using Life Cycle Assessment—Case Study of Professional Footwear

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandra Bodoga

    (Faculty of Industrial Design and Business Management, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, 29 Prof. Dimitrie Mangeron Blvd., 700050 Iasi, Romania)

  • Andreea Nistorac

    (Faculty of Industrial Design and Business Management, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, 29 Prof. Dimitrie Mangeron Blvd., 700050 Iasi, Romania)

  • Maria Carmen Loghin

    (Faculty of Industrial Design and Business Management, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, 29 Prof. Dimitrie Mangeron Blvd., 700050 Iasi, Romania)

  • Dorina Nicolina Isopescu

    (Department of Civil and Industrial Buildings, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Building Services, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, 29 Prof. Dimitrie Mangeron Blvd., 700050 Iasi, Romania)

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method for assessing the environmental impact of a product, activity, or system across all the stages of its life cycle. LCA can identify the activities with a major impact on the environment throughout the life cycle of a product. To analyze the environmental implications of footwear, the LCA was applied to a pair of shoes designed for professional use. In this paper, the impact of a single pair of shoes was studied. Every year, footwear production worldwide is over 22 billion pairs, which has a significant impact on the environment. In this case study, the “cradle-to-grave” approach was used, which refers to all the activities involved in the life cycle of a footwear product, starting from raw material extraction, manufacturing, use, maintenance, and, in the end, disposal. The LCA was conducted using the SimaPro software. The environmental impact assessment of the analyzed shoe needed the acquisition of two crucial datasets. Background inventory data were sourced from the Ecoinvent database (version 3.3). The impact was quantified using the Global Warming Potential (GWP) metric, which calculates the contribution of emissions to global warming over a 100-year time limit according to the established values provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was measured in relative carbon dioxide equivalents (kg CO 2 eq) to facilitate a standardized comparison. The results show that the total carbon footprint for a pair of safety boots is 18.65 kg of CO 2 eq with the “component manufacture” stage as a major contributor accumulating almost 80%.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandra Bodoga & Andreea Nistorac & Maria Carmen Loghin & Dorina Nicolina Isopescu, 2024. "Environmental Impact of Footwear Using Life Cycle Assessment—Case Study of Professional Footwear," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(14), pages 1-14, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:14:p:6094-:d:1436744
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/14/6094/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/14/6094/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bai, Chunguang & Sarkis, Joseph, 2010. "Integrating sustainability into supplier selection with grey system and rough set methodologies," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 252-264, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alptekin Ulutaş & Ayşe Topal & Dragan Pamučar & Željko Stević & Darjan Karabašević & Gabrijela Popović, 2022. "A New Integrated Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model for Sustainable Supplier Selection Based on a Novel Grey WISP and Grey BWM Methods," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-20, December.
    2. Scott, James & Ho, William & Dey, Prasanta K. & Talluri, Srinivas, 2015. "A decision support system for supplier selection and order allocation in stochastic, multi-stakeholder and multi-criteria environments," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 226-237.
    3. Pishchulov, Grigory & Trautrims, Alexander & Chesney, Thomas & Gold, Stefan & Schwab, Leila, 2019. "The Voting Analytic Hierarchy Process revisited: A revised method with application to sustainable supplier selection," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 166-179.
    4. Per Engelseth & Richard Glavee-Geo & Artur Janusz & Enoch Niboi, 2020. "The Emergent Nature of Networked Sustainable Procurement," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-18, December.
    5. Dobos, Imre & Vörösmarty, Gyöngyi, 2014. "Green supplier selection and evaluation using DEA-type composite indicators," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 273-278.
    6. M. Ángeles Sanfiel-Fumero & Yaiza Armas-Cruz & Olga González-Morales, 2017. "Sustainability of the tourist supply chain and governance in an insular biosphere reserve destination: the perspective of tourist accommodation," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(7), pages 1256-1274, July.
    7. Chunguang Bai & Joseph Sarkis, 2013. "Green information technology strategic justification and evaluation," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 15(5), pages 831-847, November.
    8. Amin Mahmoudi & Saad Ahmed Javed, 2022. "Probabilistic Approach to Multi-Stage Supplier Evaluation: Confidence Level Measurement in Ordinal Priority Approach," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 31(5), pages 1051-1096, October.
    9. Lin, Rong-Ho, 2012. "An integrated model for supplier selection under a fuzzy situation," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 55-61.
    10. Abdullah Yıldızbaşı & Cihat Öztürk & Deniz Efendioğlu & Serol Bulkan, 2021. "Assessing the social sustainable supply chain indicators using an integrated fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods: a case study of Turkey," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 4285-4320, March.
    11. Agnieszka Konys, 2019. "Green Supplier Selection Criteria: From a Literature Review to a Comprehensive Knowledge Base," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-41, August.
    12. Yinghui Song & Junwu Wang & Feng Guo & Jiequn Lu & Sen Liu, 2021. "Research on Supplier Selection of Prefabricated Building Elements from the Perspective of Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-24, May.
    13. Nihan Kabadayı, 2020. "An Integrated Fuzzy DEMATEL and Intuitionistic Fuzzy TOPSIS Method to Evaluate Sustainable Suppliers," Alphanumeric Journal, Bahadir Fatih Yildirim, vol. 8(2), pages 201-226, December.
    14. Chandra Prakash Garg & Archana Sharma, 2020. "Sustainable outsourcing partner selection and evaluation using an integrated BWM–VIKOR framework," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 1529-1557, February.
    15. Fahimnia, Behnam & Sarkis, Joseph & Eshragh, Ali, 2015. "A tradeoff model for green supply chain planning:A leanness-versus-greenness analysis," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 173-190.
    16. Hassini, Elkafi & Surti, Chirag & Searcy, Cory, 2012. "A literature review and a case study of sustainable supply chains with a focus on metrics," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 69-82.
    17. Xin-Long Xu & Hsing Hung Chen, 2020. "Exploring the relationships between environmental management and financial sustainability in the energy industry: Linear and nonlinear effects," Energy & Environment, , vol. 31(7), pages 1281-1300, November.
    18. Mubarik, Muhammad Shujaat & Kazmi, Syed Hasnain Alam & Zaman, Syed Imran, 2021. "Application of gray DEMATEL-ANP in green-strategic sourcing," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    19. Su-Yol Lee, 2021. "Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Digital-Based Supply Chain Integration, and Firm Performance: A Cross-Country Empirical Comparison between South Korea and Vietnam," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-13, June.
    20. Alireza Arshadi Khamseh, 2021. "A Time-Dependent Sustainable–Flexible Supplier Selection Considering Uncertainty and TODIM Method in Iranian Dairy Industries," Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Springer;Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management, vol. 22(2), pages 113-126, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:14:p:6094-:d:1436744. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.