The Life Cycle of Stuff

Beyond Recycling

The life cycle of a monarch butterfly

The life cycle of a product

What are the steps in the life cycle of a waffle iron?

Product Stewardship

The Government requires producers of certain products to take responsibility for the life cycle management of their products, including collection and recycling

When we use raw materials or natural resources from the Earth, it has an

IMPACT on our planet.

To IMPACT means to influence or effect

Do a pair of jeans have an impact on our environment?

everything we use has a storylooking at the life cycle of a product helps us

understand how it impacts the planet

• Clear-cutting• Pesticide use • Water use• Erosion• Habitat

disruption

What are some environmental

impacts of growing crops

(such as cotton)?

What are some environmental impacts

of clear cutting ?

(to make room for cotton crops)

• Habitat Destruction• Erosion (soil loss)• Changes to climate and

to hydrological cycle

What are some environmental impacts of mining for minerals

and coal, a fossil fuel?(used for chemicals on cotton)

• Habitat destruction• Erosion• Water pollution

What are some environmental

impacts of drilling for oil, a

fossil fuel?(Used to transport

cotton)

• Habitat destruction

• Air pollution• Water Pollution

Factories produce emissions when raw materials are turned into products

(such as cotton into jeans!) by using heat, pressure, water and fossil fuels.

emissions are released (or emitted) into the air when fossil fuels are burned

also called: air pollution,

smoke, smog, greenhouse

gases

Factories also produce liquid waste. This is called effluent

What are the environmental

impacts of transportation?

• Fossil fuel use

• Emissions• Habitat

destruction

• Do we buy more than we need?

• Do we use them fully?

• How often to we wash them? (using detergents creates effluent)

Consumption

What are the environmental

impacts of disposal?

• Emissions• Habitat

destruction• Energy use

Everything we use has an impact on the Planet

Each pair of jeans has its own storyThe impact of our jeans can be larger or smaller depending on their life cycle

A company can make better choices and understand the impact of their product through a Life Cycle Assessment

What choices can we make to reduce the impact of our “stuff” on the Planet?

* Buy recycled, or recyclable products (less waste)

*Buy locally made materials (less transportation)

* Reuse, repair and recycle (less need for ‘new’ stuff, and raw materials)

* Buy Less!

Extra slides

Can we green our jeans?

Making Levi's® WaterLess Jeans Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9iOUea46TU&feature=related

A real life example of greening jeans!

Can you hyper link this Dawn?:

Reducing the impactProducts don’t always HAVE to co

come from raw materials.

How can we reduce the raw materials, energy and waste that

goes into making new products?

We need many raw materials

from many different

countries

Each of these raw materials has an impact on the planet

To make a pair of jeans…