Durability testing
Although not everything durable is sustainable, items with a longer useable lifespan don’t need replacing as often. This means fewer materials used, and fewer products disposed of. However, a balance needs to be struck as durability should not mean materials cannot be recycled, or don’t break down quickly when they go to landfills.
Although not everything durable is sustainable, items with a longer useable lifespan don’t need replacing as often. This means fewer materials used, and fewer products disposed of. However, a balance needs to be struck as durability should not mean materials cannot be recycled, or don’t break down quickly when they go to landfills.
Prolonging a product’s life through quality, maintainability and reparability are now considerations of an eco-design. There is a focus on this strategy by Governments intent on minimizing waste by reducing the need to dispose of products.
Textile durability standards
The European Union has published eco-design criteria for textiles setting standards for clothing, bath, bed and kitchen textiles, curtains, floor coverings, upholstery fabrics and mattress ticking. The EU has concluded that inferior quality will reduce the lifespan of these products and that consumers should be warned about product durability limitations.
The EU Eco-Design guidelines set requirements that are relevant for different product categories, such as strength and abrasion, visual appearance, shape retention, pilling and colour change and post-cleaning performance.
Closing the textile loop
The EU guidelines focus on volume of recycled content, the dismantlability, recyclability, and traceability of materials used.
Durability of all materials
The principle of durability and sustainability applies to all materials, provided that the end-of-life characteristics have been considered. To effectively promote positive durability characteristics the claims must be validated through third-party testing.
Eurofins durability testing services
Our goal at Eurofins is to provide our customers with the products and services they need to make informed decisions about their business and strategies.
To enable our customers to assess the durability of their products and understand the end-of-life characteristics of products, we offer a range of services.
- Full suite of quality testing for textiles, leathers, plastics, metals, synthetics
- Advanced durability testing on multiple materials and products
- Highly accelerated lifetime testing
- Temperature and humidity testing
- Temperature and shock testing
- Solar and UV exposure testing
- Salt spray exposure
- Mechanical impacts and ingress protection
- Recyclability assessment
- Biodegradability, compostability and disintegration testing
- Validation of recycled content
We can provide recommended testing methods and requirements for most materials to our customers.
All Services
Our services
Why Eurofins Sustainability Services?
Specialist experience in leather, textiles, paper, packaging and plastics
Multiple testing facilities
Complete package from biodegradability to toxicity impacts and plant response
Can be linked with the microplastic analysis of degradant