Dressing up the environmental potential for product-service systems: A comparative life cycle assessment on consumption in rental clothing vs. linear business models

Abstract: Alternative business models such as product-service systems (PSSs) have been cited as a solution for the impacts from consumption and fast fashion, but there is a lack of evidence supporting the environmental claims of such business models for clothing. The research aimed to understand if rental clothing business models such as PSSs have the environmental benefits often purported by identifying ways to define the function of rental clothing, and quantifying the environmental impacts of rental clothing in a life cycle assessment (LCA). Since consumer behaviour can be reflected in different ways in how they engage with products, three functional units were analysed. These functional units offer alternative perspectives to the impact, yielding different consumption scenarios from cradle-to-grave to quantify the impact potential of a PSS in comparison with a linear business model. These scenarios include variation in use intensity, rental transport mode, and replacement rate of rental for purchased clothing. Summarising the total impact for one system in comparison to another is difficult since a single score would not fully capture the disparity in the contribution of the impacts for different categories. The variation in the impact by the scenarios throughout the different functional units indicates that the environmental savings potential for rental business models to replace linear business models are suitable when rental business models substitute the need to purchase garments to a high degree. Results also suggest that the replacement of one use or wear occasion by one rental garment does not create environmental benefits due to the high transportation burden needed to facilitate one rental. The research contributes to the development of a methodology to understand the environmental impact of shared goods and provides quantitative evidence of the environmental impacts of a clothing PSS for four impact categories. Business models such as PSSs do have environmental potential when given the right conditions to cultivate, and they can play an important role in shifting traditional consumption thinking and slowly dissolving the connection of consumers to ownership and products.