Resource and product lifecycle

When discussing natural resources or waste management, it is easy to think of each topic as independent of one another, without recognizing their relationship.

For natural resources to be considered as useful, they must be converted and transformed into goods and services to benefit people and the environment. Unfortunately, some of the most pressing environmental challenges are a result of excessive resource consumption.

Canada traditionally follows a linear economy. This can be thought of as a “take-make-dispose” approach. A resource is converted into a product and then disposed of when it is no longer useful or wanted.

Select each icon in the image to learn about what the product life cycle includes:

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The process of creating materials from their natural form requires a significant amount of energy and generates large quantities of waste. This inevitably increases atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions.

In a linear economy, value is created by producing and selling as many products as possible. But unfortunately, this enables unsustainable resource extraction and waste disposal, potentially damaging our environment. Hence the need for Life Cycle Assessments.

A Life Cycle Assessment is conducted to quantify the environmental impact of each stage. This allows organizations to examine the relationship between production, the environment and social issues involved in a product's life cycle. For example, let's review a cotton T-shirt's life cycle assessment results.

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Life Cycle Assessments quantify the environmental impact of each stage in the life cycle of a resource or product. This assessment allows us to examine the relationships between production, the environment and social issues involved in a product's life cycle.

Let’s take a look at a plain cotton t-shirt:

Before there is a t-shirt, there is cotton. The Extraction stage of the t-shirt’s life cycle involves the cultivation, harvesting and transportation of cotton from the farms where it is grown. This stage requires the natural resources of water, soil, and solar energy to grow the cotton, along with the tools and equipment need to cultivate, harvest and transport the cotton. Unfortunately, most cotton production involves the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can have significant effects in terms of ecotoxicity and environmental harm.

During the Manufacturing stage, the raw cotton goes through several steps, including:

Spinning
Knitting
Dyeing
Making up (the actual construction of the t-shirt itself)

Each step in the Manufacturing stage requires the input of energy, additional materials (such as dye and equipment), and loss, including loss of raw fiber during spinning, loss of yarn during knitting, and loss of fabric during making up. Manufacturing can also include greenhouse gas emissions from the use of energy and equipment and chemical waste from dyeing.

Now that we have the actual product (a t-shirt), we move on to Distribution, involving the transportation of the t-shirt to stores and consumers. This stage requires energy in the form of fuels and results in additional greenhouse gas emissions.

The product lifecycle continues once the product is in the hands of consumers during the Consumption phase, where the t-shirt goes through washing, drying, and (potentially) ironing, continuing to use energy, water and materials such as soap.

When the consumer is done with a product, it enters the Disposal phase, which in a linear economy typically means ending up in the garbage and, ultimately, the landfill.

When we consider all of these stages, we can quickly see that the life cycle of a t-shirt has a variety of environmental impacts, including:

Global warming potential
Ecotoxicity/environment harm potential
Water use
Energy (Electricity) use

The lifecycle concept is essential for broadening our perspective and to better understand the cause-and-effect relationship of each of these stages. This is not only important for economic prosperity but also for mitigating environmental impacts and promoting societal well-being.

Learn more about the impacts of the lifecycle of a t-shirt

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Sustainable resource management

Natural resources support life and economic processes. Learn more about them and how to manage them sustainably by clicking on the following image:

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Sustainable use of natural resources strives to maintain long-term use while maximizing social benefits and minimizing environmental impacts. Natural resources are often considered key assets for driving development and generating wealth.

So, when humans overuse natural resources for their own benefit, resource depletion (when resources become scarce because they are consumed faster than they can be replaced) results.

Sustainable resource management lies at the intersection of three priorities to minimize environmental impacts, maximize social benefits and maintain long-term use.

For example:

Commercial fisheries are vital to the Atlantic Provinces' economic and social framework, particularly Indigenous and rural coastal communities. However, poor management can make this renewable resource non-renewable. For example, First Nation communities have witnessed years of overfishing due to industrial harvesting and inefficient commercial fishing practices. As a result, fish stocks declined while ghost gear (discarded or lost fishing gear) increased.

Therefore, when not sustainably managed, this renewable resource becomes depleted and causes cascading effects and long-term damage to the environment and people's economic, social, and cultural well-being.

Learn more about ghost gear in the Atlantic provinces

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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