Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Fashion

The textiles and fashion sector is the fastest growing industry due to an increasing population, emerging economies that increase the purchasing power of their populations, and the continued growth of fast fashion characterised by a shorter lifespan of products leading to unsustainable discarding. Most of the processes of manufacturing, raw material extraction, and processing of fibers and fabrics are carbon, water, and energy-intensive accounting for more than 70% of the life cycle carbon emissions of the product. Not only do the processes release emissions into the air but the use of several human hazardous chemicals are released into water bodies corrupting the biodiversity and natural ecosystems. Thus, it is important to gain insights regarding the environmental impact of their products by performing a life cycle assessment (LCA) by the companies operating in the textile sector.

Overview of LCA

“Life Cycle Assessment methodology” is a tool to gauge the environmental impact, that is “carbon footprint”, of the product during its life cycle, that is ‘cradle to grave’. The impact is assessed in different stages of production in the textiles and clothing sector, right from the extraction of resources to the production, use, and disposal of the product. LCA can also be adapted for a ‘cradle to gate’ boundary, where the environmental impact assessment does not include the end use and disposal stage of a product life cycle. Companies prefer to use the latter due to the availability of data on manufacturing processes and products used in manufacturing with the businesses. Since they can find data relating to Scope 3 emissions, they tend to avoid the ‘cradle to grave’ boundary. However, evolving regulations require companies to account for these Scope 3 emissions. During the LCA, companies can find the answers to questions relating to materials used in the product, place of manufacturing raw materials, chemicals used in the supply chain, “Scope 1, 2 and 3” emissions in each of manufacturing, details of transportation and packaging of the product, and what happens when it becomes a waste by using LCA.

LCA helps in quantifying the emissions at each stage and provides insights into the carbon-intensiveness of each manufacturing process. It helps in identifying the hotspots which helps in making more informed decisions on the right material to source, manufacturing technology, and sustainable product design. While developing a new product, the company can use LCA to gauge its environmental impact before launching it in the market. Further, due to increasing greenwashing by the companies, watchdogs of sustainability increased the demand for proof of their claims. LCA acts as evidence of green proofing your manufacturing processes and prevents companies from making false ‘green claims’. It has become a trend that is aligned with the evolving landscape of regulations and stringent laws such as CBAM, CSRD, and BRSR, and helps in sustainable reporting. This scientific tool can be used as a marketing instrument for a company to show their sustainable decisions, improve their brand image and increase stakeholders’ confidence.

Although the life cycle assessment methodology was developed earlier in the 1960s and 1970s it was standardised by ISO standards 14040 and ISO 14044 standards in the 1990s, addressing the quantitative assessment methods for the assessment. Further, the EU also established various ways to measure the environmental footprint - Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Organization Environmental Footprint (EF) methods in 2013, which are cradle-to-grave boundary methods and provide detailed requirements for modeling the environmental impacts of the flows of material/energy and the emissions and waste streams associated with a product or an organization throughout the life cycle. Additionally, the EU has also provided Product Environment Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) that complement the PEF method by providing additional specifications for the product category concerned (e.g. defining the functional unit or stages to be analyzed, etc.).

Conducting LCA for businesses has been a tedious task for the companies due to data unavailability and lack of information flows in the supply chains. A large complex network of suppliers operates in the textile supply chain having specific roles within the production processes. They maintain records on different processes which are characterised by irregular and different reporting methods. Sometimes, it is difficult for companies to analyse the different and incomplete sets of data creating gaps for “life cycle analysis”. For small companies, LCA is an expensive task requiring time and efforts plus a team of experts which can help with technical aspects of data collection, analyses by using statistical software. They want a simplified version of “life cycle assessment methodology” in this evolving landscape where LCA has become pertinent to the needs of consumers, investors, and watchdogs of the environment. Further, textile and fashion industry is changing trends every year requiring the processes to be revised regularly. Thus, “life cycle assessment methodology” is required to upkeep with this dynamic setting and incorporate them in the final analysis.

Many Solutions to this problem

The importance of “life cycle analysis” is widely recognised, and companies are seeking simpler solutions to address this need. Many organisations, such as Sphera and PRé Sustainability, have developed “sustainability platform” like GaBi, SimaPro, and OpenLCA.

These platforms possess the following problems which hinders contemporary businesses to operate them effectively:

• Not Compatible with Day-to-Day Applications: SimaPro and OpenLCA do not support Excel format, preventing companies from downloading data, reports, and related documents in the widely-used Microsoft Office suite. Additionally, SimaPro is only compatible with the Windows operating system. Contemporary businesses use a range of operating systems to secure their confidential data, and this lack of compatibility makes it difficult for them to use these legacy software solutions.
• Incompatibility with macOS X: Apple products have seen exponential growth in usage, with increasing sales predicting a significant rise in businesses using the macOS X operating system. These "sustainability platforms" are not compatible with macOS, forcing businesses to purchase Windows to operate the software, thus increasing their tech costs. This inconsistency makes the software inaccessible to a large number of business users.
• Inadequate for Business Use Cases: Modern businesses need software that allows easy operation, data extraction, and report generation to meet increased sustainability disclosures and reporting requirements. Developed in the 1990s and 2000s primarily for academic purposes, these legacy software solutions do not cater to the needs of businesses for analyzing large datasets. They often require continuous support from staff of these softwares’ companies, reducing the software's overall efficiency.
• Questionable Data Reliability: Occasionally, these tools fail to provide background information on embedded datasets, leading companies to question the reliability of the data and become dependent on support staff for clarification and assistance.

Greenstitch solves these problems by making a “sustainability platform” which is user friendly and a tailored solution for the textile and fashion industry. It overcomes the problem of compatibility with daily microsoft office suite applications and different operating systems, keeping in mind the high reliance of businesses on these applications. Further, since it operates on cloud space, it omit the need to have additional storage in the desktops. Given the easy-to-use nature of this software, businesses can operate this platform independently with minimal support.

Greenstitch: Tailored Solution of LCA

Greenstitch is the AI automated “sustainability platform” that is specially designed for textile, clothing, and fashion companies providing real-time LCA of each product produced by the companies. It is custom-made, easy-to-use, state-of-the-art software and has overcome many problems that legacy software like GaBi, and Simapro have faced such as being user-friendly and requiring less contact with the support staff of Greenstitch. It provides the following features in LCA which can help businesses to operate independently:

1. Smart Automation in data entry and gaps: Greenstitch has automated the data collection and “Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions” calculation at each stage of the life of a product. The process of entering data into the software takes two weeks and then it is ready to use. Further, primary data gaps are filled through the existing ERPs & inventory databases, such as Ecoinvent, and Base Empriente which leads to smooth analysis. Moreover, the software can integrate previous sustainability reports and datasets of the company making it easier for future analysis and providing 10x faster results with audit-grade accuracy.
2. “Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions”: Greenstitch accurately calculated “Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions” with an integrated database and up-to-date standards, methodologies, and conversion factors. It also calculated the Scope 3 emissions that a company may face.
3. Identifying hotspots: LCA through Greenstich identifies “supply chain environmental impact” areas, that are, hotspots having the highest “carbon footprint” in the textile value chain, and suggests tailored solutions to reduce the same. It helps in finding low-carbon suppliers, cost-savings in the supply chain, and monetary opportunities in terms of sustainable finance in reducing emissions towards net zero.
4. Easy Language: Using GreenStitch doesn't require LCA expertise and unnecessary knowledge of the jargon of LCA engineering. Platform's business nomenclature helps textile owners easily identify, collect, or integrate data across their supply chain and kickstart their sustainability journey.
5. Compatible with global frameworks: GreenStitch follows globally recognized standards and frameworks such as the GHG Protocol, SBTi, TFCS, UNFCCC, GRI, and PEF protocol. It also helps in downloading reports compatible with various regulations such as BRSR, CSDDD, CSRD, Higg, and CDP reporting in one place.
6. Experts of Greenstitch: Although Greenstitch aims to make businesses independent in their sustainability journey, however, in-house expertise of Greenstitch is available to understand unique challenges faced by the organisation, their objectives, and opportunities, and co-create strategies and initiatives that align with their business goals.

By adopting smart automation and artificial intelligence, compatible with universal operating systems, Greenstitch has tried to offer a simple, easy-to-use solution to textile and fashion companies to understand their “supply chain environmental impact” and make them sustainable.

References

1. Dahllöf, Lisbeth. (2003). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) applied in the Textile Sector: the Usefulness, Limitations and Methodological Problems – A literature Review. Environmental Systems Analysis Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden. https://core.ac.uk/reader/70570760
2. van Dulmen, N., Wammes, P., Ahmed, N., Witteveen, P., Vandepaer, L., Guinée, J. (2023). A Framework for Life Cycle Inventory Modeling of Chemical Substances in the Footwear and Apparel Industry. In: Muthu, S.S. (eds) Progress on Life Cycle Assessment in Textiles and Clothing. Textile Science and Clothing Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9634-4_1
3. Zamani, Bahareh. (2023). [Guide] Life cycle assessments for textile and fashion products. Carbonfact. https://www.carbonfact.com/blog/knowledge/lca-fashion-textile
4. Song, Mingyu. (2024). Simplified Comparison of LCA Software: Simapro vs Gabi. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simplified-comparison-lca-software-simapro-vs-gabi-mingyu-song-ynmxf/