Carhartt’s line of durable workwear apparel products are made globally, and sold primarily in North America. As other companies in the apparel industry, they have environmental challenges due to a complex global supply chain. Carhartt wants to determine the impact of these upstream supply chain practices in creating their some of their products.

The team will assess and quantify the life-cycle impacts of a variety of Carhartt apparel products, with particular focus on the upstream supply chain practices in raw material procurement through product assembly. Various trade-off analyses will be performed to understand the impact of new material types, different transportation methods, and various finishing methodologies. The audience for these assessments will be internal Carhartt development teams. The results will be used internally to drive sustainable design thinking in the product development process from a multi-faceted sustainability perspective.