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• Understanding the environmental impact of Swedish fashion consumption – The First Life-cycle-assessment on Swedish fashion consumption including an evaluation of chemical use.
• With the objective to clarify what sustainable fashion means for the Swedish fashion industry, five key garments were examined using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and to give a representative picture of Swedish fashion consumption.
• LCA is a globally used and accepted method for assessing environmental impacts of a product’s life cycle from cradle to grave. The selected garments were: a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a dress, a jacket and a hospital uniform.
• The environmental impact of “one average use” of each of these garments was assessed to permit the detailed study, such as the examination of the environmental significance of different life cycle phases. The environmental impact of the five garments was then scaled up to represent Swedish national clothing consumption for one year. This permitted the study of broader aspects, such as the relative importance of different garments and the potential of a range of interventions for impact reduction.
• The environmental impact of the garments was expressed using indicators for water use, non-renewable energy use, agricultural land occupation, contributions to climate change (also called “carbon footprint”), freshwater ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, human toxicity (carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic), photochemical oxidant formation, and acidification. The carbon footprint from the Swedish fashion consumption is approximately 0.25 tonnes CO2-equivalents per capita and year.
CALIK DENIM
• Calik Denim registers the environmental impacts of its products throughout their life cycles by having them verified by independent verifiers. The environmental impacts at all production stages from cotton production and raw material supply to final product have become measurable with the Life Cycle Assessment approach. The visual weight design of the LCA reports was made and the EPD documents, which are summary documents for the results, were prepared, approved and published for eight types of fabrics. In addition, approval process continues for 10 qualities whose EPD studies were completed.
H&M
H&M Company evaluates the sustainability credentials of recycled and sustainably sourced materials by using third-party verified life cycle assessment data such as the MadeBy fibre benchmark and the Higg Index (specifically the Material Sustainability Index within the Higg).
H&M supports recycling and reuse for sustainable fashion
H&M draws attention to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), water saving in the production process, and of course, sustainable fashion, which focuses on the environmental impact of products with its latest recycled collection, which opens a separate bracket for recycling by both reducing the use of materials and reusing existing parts.
LEVI’S
In 2007, Levi’s started Life Cycle assessment which assess the entire lifecycle impact of a core set of products. The study focused primarily on the company’s U.S. operations and uncovered that the greatest water and energy impact was in two areas: cotton cultivation and consumer care. In 2010, they joined hands with Better Cotton Initiative to educate farmers on how they can optimise their yield while minimizing their water and chemical application. In 2018, Better cotton had scaled from 0 to 67% of LS&Co.’s cotton supply. Another initiative taken was to add a Care Tag for the planet on to the pair of Levi’s jeans which carries a simple message on how consumers can reduce the amount of water they use to care for their jeans. In 2011, the Water less programme was launched, which included a series of technical innovations that saved water compared with traditional methods. In 2012, they signed the Joint Roadmap Toward Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals, which initiated collective action with other leading brands to remove hazardous chemicals from apparel supply chains. In 2013, they launched Screened Chemistry, which is an approach to prevent hazardous chemical formulations from entering our supply chain from the outset. In 2014, Levi’s became the first apparel brand to author a standard for manufacturing water recycling and reuse. They also open-sourced their sustainability techniques by inviting competitors into their innovation lab in San Francisco in 2016 and shared how to apply water less finishing techniques.
REFERENCES:
• https://australiancotton.com.au/supply_chain/cotton-life-cycle-assessment
• HM_group_SustainabilityReport_2017_FullReport
• H&M; https://bigumigu.com/haber/hm-gezegen-icin-zamani-geriye-sariyor/
• https://ic-ce.com/case-study-levis/
• https://levistrauss.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Full-LCA-Results-Deck-FINAL.pdf
• http://mistrafuturefashion.com/output/lca-five-garments/
• Çalık Denim Annual Report 2020; https://calikdenim.com/content/files/01-clk-den-c6666040.pdf
