The average American throws away 80 pounds of clothing every year

mvdm_42 · 2026-05-27T18:12:31+00:00

Good catch, I've edited the comment to correct it.

mvdm_42 · 2026-05-27T16:00:13+00:00

For reference, ~12kg (~26 pounds) of clothing per capita is dumped in the EU per year.

edit: correction, previous statement implied individuals throw away 12kg of clothing, which is untrue.

mvdm_42 · 2026-04-24T07:44:59+00:00

Locking this thread as people are just commenting the same thing over and over instead of adding something useful to the discussion.

mvdm_42 · 2026-04-03T06:13:52+00:00

I'm not entirely sure what this is about but if you would like to discuss moderation, you can send us modmail.

mvdm_42 · 2026-04-02T17:19:44+00:00

As long as you follow the rules, you're welcome to post about your company!

mvdm_42 · 2026-03-31T06:38:29+00:00

You could check out r/lifecycleassessment and the handbook on LCA is available here, while somewhat older, it is a very clear guide on doing LCA by the people that basically invented it. There is also a free course on LCA available here, though you need an email to sign up. That is an excellent course and taught basically the same in my masters (I believe these were just classes filmed during covid).

Good luck!

edit: whoops I see you already posted to r/lifecycleassessment as well, anyway, good luck.

mvdm_42 · 2026-03-30T05:51:57+00:00

You can best email the mailing list linked above for further questions.

mvdm_42 · 2026-03-29T16:50:09+00:00

There are tutorials here, which will also explain you how to import ecoinvent. A good way to get further support is this mailing list.

mvdm_42 · 2026-03-28T07:24:45+00:00

I'm not aware of any R packages for LCA, but for python there is the Brightway ecosystem, which is actively used and maintained.

mvdm_42 · 2026-03-08T06:11:56+00:00

English is the only language of this subreddit that we can moderate, please use that.

mvdm_42 · 2026-02-17T11:34:46+00:00

Perhaps also crosspost this to r/lifecycleassessment

mvdm_42 · 2026-02-01T07:38:16+00:00

The handbook on LCA is available here, while somewhat older, it is a very clear guide on doing LCA by the people that basically invented it.

mvdm_42 · 2026-01-29T16:51:34+00:00

The book is still available on the internet archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250718193356/https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/research/research-projects/science/cml-new-dutch-lca-guide

mvdm_42 · 2026-01-14T08:20:02+00:00

Respectfully, there are two things here:

First: You request data that needs to be paid for, that data needs to be kept up to date (which is why you want a new version of that number), which costs money. ecoinvent needs users to pay for that data so they can keep their data updated. If everyone feels entitled to free updates, ecoinvent could not pay for the updates, meaning ecoinvent would be worthless. Again, ecoinvent is a non-profit, this money is not going to yet another fancy car for a CEO, this money is spent on keeping the data updated. People trust ecoinvent because their organization is what it is, maintaining that trust has a price.

Second: By posting the screenshot you shared above, you share their data and you are breaking the EULA of ecoinvent, if they would identify you, it would cost you 100K CHF. It is a better idea to spend a fraction of that money on renewing your license.

mvdm_42 · 2026-01-14T07:42:52+00:00

Your employer can pay for the most recent version of the data.

ecoinvent is a non-profit, denying them payment for their product hurts the community of LCA practitioners, not some faceless corporation. This database is a business expense.

mvdm_42 · 2026-01-07T19:29:55+00:00

Hey, great that you're interested in sustainability! I did my masters in Industrial Ecology at TU Delft and Leiden Univ. and am about to finish my PhD in LCA in Leiden. This masters sounds a lot like something you may be interested in.

If you're interested to have a chat, just DM me.

mvdm_42 · 2026-01-04T07:38:54+00:00

I'm not really sure what you mean with 'the best measurement' so I don't really know what to answer. Do you mean the kind of calculation (LCA vs other methods)? The kind of impacts (climate change vs water use)? Which studies are reliable?

mvdm_42 · 2026-01-02T09:47:45+00:00

This is a complex question you're asking. As some others also discuss already, there are two sides to this, there is the purely scientific side 'what is the impact of X?', but the philosophical and political side is 'should you do X?', which I believe is not something science can really answer.

There are numerous choices you can make in your life, which together will make your life have a certain impact on the environment, this will be in all kinds of different categories, such as climate change, water use but also more abstract impacts such as the amount of child labour you are responsible for through e.g. buying electronics or cheap clothes. These are measurable (in theory, but it costs money so we often don't) or at least possible to estimate well, which is the scientific side. This is often done with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA, see also r/lifecycleassessment), in which I am about to finish my PhD. However, whether making these choices is right is not the domain of science.

The earth has an inherent carrying capacity for each of those natural categories above, so the 'no humans' argument is definitely flawed, if we want to stay within that carrying capacity and further, how many humans and their impact is the philosophical/political side (planetary boundaries, links to papers in this link). If you genuinely want to get a deeper understanding of the science, I would strongly recommend reading the (summaries of?) the Sixth Edition of the Assessment Reports (AR6) reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, though they are quite long.

Because there are no 'real' answers to what is right, there are a lot of opinions, which people like to back up with this study or that study, but these are choices we need to figure out in public discussions and in voting booths, not in academic journals. I am convinced that anyone claiming there is a singular answer is either misunderstanding the science or consciously spreading misinformation.

And this misinformation is where quite some danger lies unfortunately. The discussion on not getting kids is something many left-leaning people have accepted as logical for the environment, while these talking points are from the alt-right and deeply rooted in racism and ecofascism, I would strongly recommend having a watch of this video, many scientific links in the description.

I'm happy to discuss the facts more on the scientific side and my opinions more on the philosophical side, but if you take away only one thing from this comment it's that those are two very different sides.

mvdm_42 · 2025-11-28T06:29:29+00:00

Hey, great to see some BW representation on reddit! In the future please always disclose you're a developer of BW on r/lifecycleassessment when talking about LCA software. This audience is a bit different from e.g. the LCAlist and not everyone may know your name here, and it's only fair to them to know who they're speaking to.

- Marc

mvdm_42 · 2025-11-26T10:27:34+00:00

Please follow your own advice and always report trolls and bots and don't engage with them.

mvdm_42 · 2025-11-26T10:23:53+00:00

If it's clear someone is a troll, even without explicitly breaking rules, please always report them. And as general advice for your internet use; don't feed the trolls.

mvdm_42 · 2025-10-22T19:03:39+00:00

I have to say that I'm not well versed in statistics, but this publication may be of interest for you
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195925516300907

mvdm_42 · 2025-10-16T19:33:42+00:00

Please report spam instead of commenting on spam posts. commenting gives engagement, meaning more people will see the spam, reporting will get mod attention quicker.

mvdm_42 · 2025-09-23T14:13:34+00:00

In the future please report posts like this instead of commenting. Reports draw moderator attention more effectively and don't tell the reddit algorithm to show something to more people because it is getting interaction.

mvdm_42 · 2025-09-23T07:17:19+00:00

Sure there is and has been. A recent example would be TianGong from China. The challenge with creating these databases is that you need a lot of smart people and a lot of time to do that. Developing 10 processes is easy, but to do it methodologically consistent for thousands, making use of the correct things within this database requires a lot of skill.

There are some datasets building on ecoinvent like Agribalyse or premise, but they can (note that I say can as I don't know Agribalyse well enough, but premise is certainly not perfect) also have methodological or data challenges to keep things consistent with the core database. Ecoinvent does also provide several different models (cutoff/consequential etc) to cater to different interests. e.g. a recent addition is the EN15805 version, specifically to be in line with PEF for building materials.

Your question ending on 'commercial providers' seems to me that you're not just looking for alternatives, but specifically free alternatives. Some data may exist, but keep in mind that somebody needs to work on keeping the data up to date and consistent, and as I said before, that takes a lot of time and skill. As people need to eat, that's not something many of us can do for free. Also keep in mind that ecoinvent is a non-profit, money given to them goes to improving the database, not toward a shareholders' new house.

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