The potential environmental benefit of the ecodesign approach: a case study in the footwear industry

The goal of this work is to couple the ecodesign approach with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to understand how different ecodesign principles affect the environmental impacts supporting the selection of the materials employed in the manufacturing of the final product. Specifically, we focused on the footwear sector, by firstly, modelling 21 different materials, secondly selecting two ecodesign principles, and ultimately comparing a traditional footwear with the two alternative compositions representative of the ecodesign principles. The results indicate that, for most impact categories considered, the designs employing traditional materials have the highest average impact.