Jeans go through multiple processes before you put them around your bum. One step is the laundry, where it is washed, bleached and altered into the denim look we love. As you can imagine, this involves a significant amount of water and chemicals. But what if we could better manage, monitor, and enhance this extensive process? This blog will explore everything you need to know and understand about Environmental Impact Measuring in denim washes.

How we create that worn-in and light-wash denim look

In the past, you could only buy untreated denim garments, also called dry denim. You had to wear them until the colour naturally faded. Nowadays, we offer jeans with this worn-in look ready for you to wear. During the laundry process, jeans undergo treatments to alter the top (micro)layers of the fabric, creating those characteristic designs. Various methods are employed for this purpose, involving both chemical and physical techniques. However, to minimise the environmental impact, we use carefully selected chemicals and innovative machines and processes to ensure responsible and sustainable washes.

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What is the Environmental Impact Measurement score?

The Environmental Impact Measurement (EIM) is a global standard developed by Jeanologia to gain insights into the laundry process. EIM is a reliable tool that shows the steps of the washing process and helps to identify the water, energy, chemical, and worker impact of denim washes. A jeans wash often needs up to 16 steps, like washing and drying or laser. We started using EIM in 2017 to improve our washing techniques in collaboration with our suppliers, looking for better techniques and processes in our laundry.

The four fundamental pillars of EIM

EIM checks four categories in the laundry process:

Water impact score
This shows the water consumption, or in other words, the litres of water used for each garment produced.
Energy impact score
It reflects the total sum of the energy required to operate machinery, tools, and heating elements used in the laundry process, shown in kWh used.
Chemical impact score
Each chemical has its own EIM Chemical Impact Score (CIS) based on hazardousness and Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) conformance. ZDHC is a renowned organisation that has defined a list of chemical limits that are safe to use during garment production. The score is based on the amount of chemicals used and their CIS score.
Worker impact score
This score shows the impact of the laundry processes on workers' health. Operations are scored based on the ergonomic and health risks of the washing steps.

"Sustainability is an ongoing journey, and our next goal is to eliminate specific hazardous chemicals"

How do we use the EIM score?

The Environmental Impact Measurement system results in a total score that is either low (0-33), medium (34-66) or high impact (67-100). By using the EIM score Kuyichi gained insights to understand, monitor and improve areas with higher scores. The EIM has proven to be an important tool to collaborate with our laundries on innovation in denim washes.

In 2022, we achieved our goal only to produce denim washes with a low EIM score. Thanks to the EIM software, we saw that water consumption and worker’s health categories both saw a reduction of over 50% compared to 2021. However, sustainability is an ongoing journey, and our next goal is to eliminate specific hazardous chemicals, such as potassium permanganate, by 2025. The EIM has helped us a lot with decreasing our environmental impact in denim washing. It pushes us and our suppliers to think of new and innovative ways to get the worn-in look, without the nasty stuff.