Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) stands as a globally recognized method for quantifying the environmental impact of products, technologies, or management processes throughout their entire life cycle. The fashion industry, given its significant role in everyday life, serves as a noteworthy example of how LCA can deepen our understanding of the environmental implications of manufacturing and consumption practices. LCA facilitates meaningful comparisons among products in terms of their environmental impact, providing valuable insights into sustainability considerations in apparel consumption. The life cycle of an apparel product encompasses raw material extraction, fiber, fabric, and garment manufacturing, distribution, consumer use, and end-of-life handling.
The fashion industry has inflicted substantial environmental damage over the past few decades, a trend that intensifies with the industry’s growth. This is notably pronounced in fast fashion, where market size plays a significant role. To transition to a more sustainable fashion industry, it is crucial for all stakeholders — including producers, retailers, consumers, shareholders, local communities, and policymakers — to gain a comprehensive understanding of the industry’s environmental impacts.
Academic research on the LCA of the fashion industry is relatively new. Nonetheless, a few well-designed and robust studies have been conducted, contributing to our understanding of the factors, procedures, and models applicable to evaluating the environmental impact of the fashion sector. For instance,Resta and Dotti (2015) proposes that LCA is instrumental in identifying key environmental impact areas related to textile and clothing products. These encompass factors such as human health, ecosystem diversity, fossil depletion, water depletion, freshwater ecotoxicity, natural land transformation, and climate change. The paper also introduced the Sustainable Textile & Clothing Scorecard (STCS), a tool used for evaluating the environmental performance of textile and clothing products. STCS includes four main impact categories: material consumption, energy consumption, water consumption, and waste production, with a total of 18 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Wiedemann et al. (2020) exemplifies the use of the LCA approach to assess the environmental impacts of a woolen sweater, covering the entire life cycle from wool production to garment disposal. Each life cycle stage involves various sub-steps, such as spinning, dyeing, knitting/weaving, and finishing in the woolen fabric production stage. This study explores multiple impact categories, including global warming, water stress, fossil fuel energy consumption, freshwater usage, and productive land occupation.
We will use freshwater consumption as an example to demonstrate how LCA is conducted. Almost every stage of an apparel product’s life cycle involves freshwater use, spanning from raw material production to consumer use and recycling. Consequently, freshwater usage is incorporated into the LCA for all types of apparel products.
The environmental impact of freshwater consumption is assessed through the stress-weighted water footprint, calculated by multiplying the amount of water used by the water-stress index. This index gauges freshwater scarcity in the pertinent geographical region.
Wiedemann et al. (2020) adopted the following water stress (WTA) definition proposed by Pfister et al. (2009):
WTA is corrected for the variability of water stress caused by varying precipitation and then logistically transformed to achieve continuous values between 0.01 and 1. The resulting index is known as theWater Stress Index (WSI).
The stress-weighted water footprint is reported in water equivalents, obtained by dividing it by the national average WSI.
Other impact categories, like the consumption of fossil fuel energy and global warming, are also evaluated using standardized methods. This standardization allows for comparisons of the environmental impacts among different products and facilitates assessing a product’s current environmental impact in relation to its past impact.
Adopting a life-cycle perspective clarifies that sustainability is a multifaceted issue. Making a product more sustainable involves reducing its environmental impacts throughout its lifecycle. In the context of an apparel value chain, this can be achieved by utilizing non-fossil fuel energy sources, improving energy and water use efficiency, incorporating eco-friendly materials, and actively recycling post-consumer items.
To be continued in Part 2.
References:
Pfister S, Koehler A, Hellweg S (2009). Assessing the environmental impacts of freshwater consumption in LCA. Environ Sci Technol 43(11), 4098–4104. https://doi.org/10.1021/es802423e
Resta, B., & Dotti, S. (2015). Environmental impact assessment methods for textiles and clothing. In S. S. Muthu (Ed.), Handbook of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Textiles and Clothing (pp. 149-191). Woodhead Publishing Series in Textiles. Woodhead Publishing. ISBN 9780081001691. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-100169-1.00008-3
Wiedemann, S., Biggs, L., Nebel, B., et al. (2020). Environmental impacts associated with the production, use, and end-of-life of a woollen garment. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 25(9), 1486–1499. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-020-01766-0
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