Lifecycle Assessment

Last month, Environmental Impact Measuring (EIM), a well-known platform for measuring the environmental impact of garment finishing, presented the first global report on the environmental impact of denim finishing. Begoña García, creator of the EIM platform and co-author of the report, talks about the complexities of environmental metrics.

A new study finds that 75% of an apparel product's environmental footprint stems from areas of impact beyond carbon emissions, and reveals raw material choices and specific manufacturing processes - not packaging, distribution, or even assembly - contribute up to 90% of product impact.

The Organic Cotton Accelerator (OCA) has published the findings of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study highlighting the environmental benefits of organic cotton farming in India, offering detailed, locally relevant data demonstrating organic cotton’s reduced environmental impact compared to conventional farming.

Seven natural fibre stakeholders have come together to appeal to the European Commission to put systems in place that will properly account for the environmental benefits of natural and organic fibres, and promote cooperation across EU institutions to support sustainable, resilient textile value chains.

A new global study on the lifecycle assessment (LCA) of the modern cow leather industry has found that the farming stage (upstream) significantly contributes to the impact of five among six categories, and that that the values for several parameters were much lower than previously indicated.

A freely accessible, user-friendly, self-assessment tool—True Cost Calculator (TCC)—has been launched for the fashion ecosystem, taking into account the full lifecycle of a garment, measuring the impact step by step—from production to transport, use, and waste processing.

There’s a new cotton LCA methodology for the Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI) promising “unprecedented accuracy and consistency” in assessing the environmental impacts of cotton fibre.

Better Cotton, which has been at the receiving end over its failure to check deforestation and human rights abuses by cotton companies in Brazil, has decided to change its approach to lifecycle assessments by focusing on country-level LCAs.

The recent methodological proposal on lifecycle assessments (LCAs) by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the scientific body of the European Commission, has come in for flak as the policy landscape in which the methodology is implemented creates systemic disadvantages for innovative industries using alternative feedstocks.