Linen is a natural fibre spun from the stalk of the flax plant. It appears across apparel in shirting, summer tailoring, dresses and trousers, and it carries a large share of the home textiles market in bedding and upholstery. The carbon footprint of linen averages 1.03 kg CO₂e per kg of fibre, which places it among the lowest-impact natural fibres used at commercial scale.
What are the CO₂e emissions of linen?
1.03 kg CO₂e per kg of linen fibre
Global average range across regions: 1.03 to 1.23 kg CO₂e per kg
The figure covers cradle-to-gate production, i.e. growing and harvesting flax, retting the stalks to release the fibre, and the scutching and hackling. It stops at fibre ready to spin.
Linen’s footprint is on the lower end because flax needs less fertiliser than cotton and grows well without irrigation across most of its European range, so the farming stage carries far less embedded energy. And flax processing is largely mechanical rather than chemical, which keeps the conversion from stalk to fibre relatively light.
Linen emissions by region
| Region | kg CO₂e per kg |
| Global average | 1.03 |
| India | 1.23 |
Indian linen runs about 19% above the global average, driven mainly by a more carbon-intensive electricity grid at the processing stage.
Most apparel-grade linen comes from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, which together supply the majority of the world’s long-line flax.
Recycled linen
0.60 kg CO₂e per kg, around 42% below virgin linen
Recycled linen is produced mechanically, by pulling fabric waste back into fibre.
We arrive at this number by counting from the point waste enters the recycling process, so nothing upstream of that is included. This same value is applied across several recycled natural fibres rather than being measured specifically for linen, which makes it a sound estimate rather than a linen-specific measurement.
How does linen compare to other fibres?
| Fibre | kg CO₂e per kg |
| Recycled linen | 0.60 |
| Linen | 1.03 |
| Cotton, global average | 2.13 |
| Viscose | 2.14 |
| Polyester | 4.78 |
| Cotton, grown in India | 9.55 |
| Wool | 18.08 |
Linen’s footprint is roughly half of global-average cotton and about a fifth of polyester. Against cotton grown in India, which supplies a large share of the world’s apparel cotton, linen is lower by a factor of nine. At the high end of the same scale, cashmere averages 199.05 kg CO₂e per kg — roughly two hundred times linen’s fibre-stage footprint.
Linen water use
Linen uses 0.50 m³ of water per kg of fibre, against 0.75 for global-average cotton.
Linen’s water advantage comes almost entirely from flax being rainfed in its main growing regions. Where cotton is also rainfed, the gap narrows considerably.
What linen means for a product footprint
A linen shirt using 220 grams of fibre:
| Fibre choice | Fibre-stage emissions |
| Recycled linen | 0.13 kg CO₂e |
| Linen | 0.23 kg CO₂e |
| Cotton, global average | 0.47 kg CO₂e |
| Cotton, grown in India | 2.10 kg CO₂e |
Switching that shirt from Indian cotton to linen saves 1.87 kg CO₂e per unit. Across a 50,000-piece style, that is roughly 94 tonnes. Fibre choice swings the other way just as sharply: a 300 gram cashmere sweater carries about 60 kg CO₂e at the fibre stage alone.
Spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing all add to these figures and are not included. Linen is often heavily wet-processed to soften it, so the finished-fabric gap between linen and cotton will be narrower than the fibre-stage gap shown here.
What these figures cover
Fibre stage only. Farming through to scutched and hackled fibre. Yarn, fabric, garment manufacture and end of life are all separate.
Industry averages. These figures support an estimate of your linen footprint. They cannot support a claim that your flax grower outperforms the sector, which would need grower-level data.
Linen and hemp are modelled together. Both carry the same figure, so the numbers here cannot be used to argue that one outperforms the other.
Carbon and water only. Land use, biodiversity and the chemistry used in some retting methods are not represented.
