Life Cycle of a T-Shirt | Environmental Impact Investigation

The Description

We tell students to recycle their clothes. But how much of a T-shirt's environmental impact happens before it ever reaches a closet?

This multi-day investigation follows the life cycle of an everyday product from raw materials and manufacturing to use and disposal. Students investigate where impacts occur, compare choices, and pull their evidence into a final explanation or visual model.

What Students Will Do

• Examine the five major stages of a product's life cycle.

• Gather information from selected TED-Ed videos about clothing.

• Organize evidence and create a visual one-pager.

• Use peer feedback to improve explanations.

• Optionally investigate another product and compare models in a gallery walk.

Why This Resource Is Different

The instruction 'recycle your shirt' skips a remarkable amount of the shirt's story. Resources were extracted, materials were processed, and energy and water were used long before anyone opened a closet.

This investigation makes students examine that whole chain before proposing a solution. Instead of treating disposal as the only moment that matters, they use evidence from a product's life cycle to decide where impacts occur and which choices could actually change them.

What's Included?

• Student life-cycle investigation packet and research prompts.

• Teacher key and example responses.

• One-pager template and rubric/access page.

• Optional gallery-walk recording sheet.

• Teacher lesson plan with video suggestions and extensions.

The Details

Grades 7–12; roughly two or three periods depending on extensions. Earth Science, Environmental Science, and General Science.

PDFs and a DOCX teacher plan. Requires teacher-selected videos, research access, and optional coloring materials; films and subscriptions are not included.