Your jeans EIM score
WHAT IS EIM?
EIM, the first Environmental Impact Measuring software to assess the environmental image of garment finishing processes. Created to provide laundries and garment manufacturers with a tool to help them build more sustainable processes.
WHAT DOES EIM ASSESS?
Calculation of the enviromental Impact
Considerations to the calculation of the environmental impact of the four different categories.
Water Consumption
Measured in liters of water per garment produced. The total consumption will be the one resulting of the quantity of water used in each process step. It will depend on the liquor ratio of each of this process steps.
Energy Consumption
There are various energy sources to supply the laundry needs. In the production plants, we mainly need: Mechanical energy: The necessary energy to run the machines and other tools. Caloric energy: The one needed to heat the water of the washing steps and to heat the air for the drying steps. EIM takes into consideration both groups and bring them to a one unit measure, the KWh. The total energy consumed in one finishing process will be the sum of the energy consumed in every finishing step.
Chemicals
EIM take into consideration the hazards to the environment of the chemicals used. It punishes the use of more pollutant chemicals no matter the quantity of product used. The chemical products are classified as chemicals of high, medium or low impact to the environment following the self-classification system defined by TEGEWA. Based on this, the chemicals are given a number, being 3 the chemicals of high impact to the environment, 2 of medium impact and 1of low relevance to the environment. The total chemical impact of one process will be the some of the numerical value of all the chemicals involved in it.
Worker health
Two are the factors that can have an influence on workers’ health in the laundry. One comes from the handling of the chemicals used, and one comes from the operation they do. The evaluation of the chemical impact on workers’ health are done following same principles that to valorize the environmental impact. The consideration taken hear is the toxicology of every product. To assess the operations in a similar way, considerations are the number and the gravity of illness that can derived from it.