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Environmental assessment of Swedish clothing consumption – six garments, sustainable futures

Authors:
  • IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute Gothenburg Sweden

Abstract and Figures

The aim of this work was to map and understand the current environmental impact of Swedish clothing consumption. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to evaluate the environmental impact of six garments: a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a dress, a jacket, a pair of socks, and a hospital uniform, using indicators of climate impact (also called “carbon footprint”), energy use, water scarcity, land use impact on soil quality, freshwater ecotoxicity, and human toxicity. The environmental impact of the six garments was then scaled up to represent Swedish national clothing consumption over one year.
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... Methods for the assessment of toxicity are changing relatively rapidly, so even the units used to express contributions to toxicity can differ, adding to the incomparability of those results. LCAs often include pesticide use data in toxicity assessments 1,52,57,58 . Excluding the effects of pesticides, the toxicity associated with garment life cycles is mainly attributed to the long-term effects of metallic pollutants resulting from combustion processes for energy production. ...
... Among published LCAs, either the garment production phase (including fibre spinning, fabric production and wet treatment) 52,57,[60][61][62] or the consumer use phase 58,63 dominates the carbon footprint (Fig. 3d). The underlying differences have much to do with the source of electrical energy in use by the household 52 and national variations in prevalent laundry technologies 57 . ...
... Among published LCAs, either the garment production phase (including fibre spinning, fabric production and wet treatment) 52,57,[60][61][62] or the consumer use phase 58,63 dominates the carbon footprint (Fig. 3d). The underlying differences have much to do with the source of electrical energy in use by the household 52 and national variations in prevalent laundry technologies 57 . Moreover, garments are increasingly shipped by air cargo, which typically has higher GHG emissions than the traditional ship cargo 8 . ...
... Life cycle assessment (LCA) quantifies the environmental impacts of a system from a life cycle perspective (International Organization for Standardization, 2006). The method allows for estimating the impacts of clothing consumption on an individual (Piontek et al., 2019) and regional level (Sandin et al., 2019;Beton et al., 2014). LCA studies of garment resale and rental showed that the impact reduction depends on consumer behavior through replacement rate, mode of transport, and frequency of use of rented garments (Amasawa et al., 2023;Johnson and Plepys, 2021;Levänen et al., 2021a;Zamani et al., 2017). ...
... The unit life-cycle impacts of production were taken from a previous study (S. Roos, personal communication, 2021;Sandin et al., 2019), which included six garment types associated with different treatments and types of fiber. These six archetypes were matched by Combined Nomenclature classification codes to the categories used here (Table 2). ...
... A round trip downtown was modeled as 11.1 km (three times farther than pick-up points) covered by 13% walking, 42% diesel car, 30% gasoline car, and 15% bus (Berge, 2019). Each trip was linked with the transport of 1 kg or approximately 2-3 garments (Sandin et al., 2019;Wiese et al., 2012). ...
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The textile industry is causing environmental impacts, driven by consumption patterns and fast fashion. Here we explore how the closing of material loops can decrease the environmental impacts of clothing consumption. We analyze the clothing system of Norwegian households in 2018 by combining material flow analysis and life cycle assessment. We map the flows to explore this linear system, where most garments are acquired new and leave the system through incineration or export. We develop an alternative scenario, where the circularity increases from 5% to 74%, considering consumer willingness to rent various garment types or buy them secondhand. We reduce the climate change impacts by 57%, water scarcity by 62%, and cumulative energy demand by 47% by assuming a proper set-up of the alternative system and a change in shopping and disposal behavior. Such measures allow to keep the same consumption levels; further reductions require lowering the number of acquisitions.
... Medical workwear serves to protect the wearer's private clothing and also identifies the wearer as a member of a particular institution or occupational group. The medical workwear under study serves nursing staff and doctors with clothing size S. Depending on the source, information on the technical lifespan of medical workwear of 75, 100 or 150 washing cycles can be found in the literature (Babikir and Schuster, 2017;Müller et al., 2021;Sandin et al., 2019). In this study a technical lifespan of 100 washing cycles is assumed for each product based on Müller et al., 2021. ...
... Information on material composition and product description is largely taken from manufacturer information (Bierbaum-Proenen GmbH & Co. KG, n.d.-a, n.d.-b, n.d.-c; Engelbert Strauss GmbH & Co. KG, n.d.-a, n.d.-b). The assumptions on yarn count in dezitex (dtex) are based on values of similar products from the literature (Sandin et al., 2019). Fig. 1 depicts the generic product system boundaries and lifecycle phases for all five medical workwear items. ...
... Energy consumption of 0.11 kWh was considered for the scrub top and polo shirt, 0.08 kWh for the scrub trousers, 0.19 kWh for the doctor's coat and 0.12 kWh for doctor's trousers. The material loss during the garment production varies between 12 and 27 % depending on the literature source (Jewell et al., 2017;Rahman and Haque, 2016;Sandin et al., 2019). In this study it is modelled with 20 % based on Rahman and Haque (2016). ...
... For simplicity, it has been proxied as a small version of the high-voltage battery packs, Seats prod. (Sandin et al. 2019) Linkage prod. ...
... The production of cotton yarn was modelled using a market process for yarn in Ecoinvent. The continued production of denim from yarn was modelled based on the jeans production described in Sandin et al. (2019) (but without the elastane additive), including the datasets for bleaching, dying and drying cotton yarn, as well as weaving and confectioning. See Table S16 for the seat production unit process dataset and Figure S1 for an illustration of the cotton upholstery production modelling. ...
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... Due to high resource consumption, the textile sector, including clothing, footwear and household textiles, has the fourth highest environmental impact of all categories of EU consumption and the fifth regarding greenhouse gas emissions (Christis et al., 2019). It is estimated that Fashion is responsible for approximately 3% to 8% of global anthropogenic carbon emissions (Niinimäki et al., 2020;Quantis, 2018) and it is of interest to notice that these emissions are quite equally distributed between both the production and use phases (Benkirane, 2019;Beton et al., 2014;Sandin et al., 2019;Steinberger et al., 2009). Thus, manufacturers and consumers have the possibility to contribute to reducing the environmental impact. ...
... Considering the consumer's influence on design or end-of-life choices is limited, he/she remains a fundamental actor in the life cycle of a garment. The lifetime of products is partly under his responsibility and has a significant incidence on the environmental impact (Benkirane et al., 2016;Cooper, 1994;Cooper & Claxton, 2022;Leffland et al., 1997;Sandin et al., 2019). ...
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... Therefore, the use step is often excluded from thematic reports such as the Environmental Profit & Loss, the Danish apparel sector natural (Høst-Madsen et al. 2014), and the PUMA Carbon Footprint (Puma 2018). The Environmental Assessment of Swedish fashion consumption (Sandin et al. 2019) made several assumptions regarding user behavior, including the number of uses and washes, washing methods, transportation means and distances, and lifespan. The study also developed various scenarios based on these assumptions. ...
... Munasinghe et al. (2021) expressed similar concerns about this phase, emphasizing how the frequency of washing can affect the lifespan of a product. Interestingly, the Sandin et al. (2019) report identified the use phase as the primary source of emissions, while raw materials were found to have the second-largest impact, which contrasts with other studies. According to the International Carbon Flows report, approximately 50% of the emissions associated with a cotton t-shirt occur during the use phase. ...
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... It is estimated that every kg of cotton requires around 125 L of water to be dyed and finished [4]. Moreover, the dyeing and finishing stage relies heavily on hazardous chemicals and represents a hotspot in terms of carcinogenic human toxicity and a hotspot for non-carcinogenic human toxicity because of the use of detergents, dyes, and water-repellent agents [5]. ...
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... According to UPC (2022), the production of fabric will result in 25 kg of CO2e being released into the atmosphere. Based on the LCA study performed by Sandin et al. (2019), 3% of the emission will be emitted during the fabric's end of life. An important public health and environmental concern that affects biodiversity, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions is the accumulation of postconsumer textile waste (PCTW) in landfills and open-air dumps (Bick et al., 2018). ...
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About 50 percent of earth's land area is used by mankind. Every day 5,000 to 15,000 ha of natural area is sealed worldwide for human purposes. Land use is increasingly becoming not only a scientific but also a political and societal discussion. To cover all relevant environmental impacts of a product or process, land use aspects have to be integrated into methods like Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In this publication country and land use type specific characterization factors are presented for the land use impact categories Erosion Resistance, Mechanical Filtration, Physicochemical Filtration, Groundwater Regeneration, and Biotic Production. All factors are calculated for the land use related flows of the ELCD - European reference Life-Cycle Database based on globally available spatial data. For the calculation of the impact categories, the LANCA method published in 2010 was refined and new background data is used. The authors have been working on the integration of land use aspects into LCA for several years and contribute to international working groups as well as specific projects on this topic. All of them have been involved in the development of the LANCA tool and in the conduction of respective case studies.
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Fast fashion is a clothing supply chain model that is intended to respond quickly to the latest fashion trends by frequently updating the clothing products available in stores. The shift towards fast fashion leads to shorter practical service lives for garments. Collaborative consumption is an alternative way of doing business to the conventional model of ownership-based consumption, and one that can potentially reduce the environmental impacts of fashion by prolonging the practical service life of clothes. In this study, we used life cycle assessment to explore the environmental performance of clothing libraries, as one of the possible ways in which collaborative consumption can be implemented, and compared the advantages and disadvantages in relation to conventional business models. Furthermore, the key factors influencing the environmental impact of clothing libraries were investigated. We based our assessment on three key popular garments that are stocked in clothing libraries: jeans, T-shirts and dresses. The results showed the benefits of implementing clothing libraries associated with the garments´ prolonged service lives. Therefore to achieve environmental gains, it is important to substantially increase garment service life. Moreover, the results quantitatively demonstrated the potential risk of problem shifting: increased customer transportation can completely offset the benefits gained from reduced production. This highlighted the need to account for the logistics when implementing collaborative consumption business models.