Lifecycle Assessment

The first widely available Lifecycle Assessment study for cashmere has been released, covering nomadic grazing and farmed production systems across China and Mongolia. The study identifies primary production as the dominant impact stage and finds herd-level management and productivity as the key drivers, offering brands a baseline for targeted intervention and sourcing decisions.

A new lifecycle assessment study on polyester has been published, providing fresh impact data on virgin production in Southeast Asia and recycled production in China, Europe, and the United States. The findings pinpoint where environmental pressure is concentrated across production routes and include a social assessment of conditions affecting workers and communities.

A new lifecycle assessment released today by Cotton Incorporated reframes how the fibre's environmental performance is measured and contested. The study produces a net-negative carbon footprint at the farm gate while leaving open significant questions about the methodological assumptions and farming system consistency that underpin that finding, with implications that extend well beyond the fibre itself.

A full lifecycle ecological textile specification has been piloted with three Chinese garment enterprises, yielding certified outcomes across carbon management, biodiversity protection, and hazardous substance control. Built on a Lifecycle Assessment approach and aligned with China's dual-carbon goals, it addresses organisational management and product-level requirements across the full textile value chain through one unified certification.

Organic cotton grown by smallholders in Tanzania under the Cotton made in Africa Organic standard has recorded one of the lowest environmental footprints in global cotton production, new research has confirmed. The findings, drawn from a comprehensive lifecycle analysis, showed that the absence of synthetic pesticides, artificial fertilisers, and irrigation kept emissions well below industry norms.

Wool's greenhouse gas emissions intensity has been significantly overstated by lifecycle assessments that omit biogenic carbon, new research has found. Applying a more complete accounting standard to Australian wool production cuts average emissions dramatically, and under realistic manure retention scenarios the fibre can reach carbon neutrality, challenging frameworks that have long ranked wool poorly against synthetic alternatives.

Textile Exchange’s latest guidance sets out principles for applying lifecycle assessment data in textiles, focusing on appropriate use cases, dataset documentation, and transparency. It outlines limits on fibre comparisons, warns against overreliance on averaged figures, and stresses the importance of collecting high-quality, representative primary data to improve the reliability of reported environmental impacts.

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.