Fibres sourced from flax and recycled clothing have a lighter environmental footprint with man-made cellulose fibre (MMCF) made from Belgian flax, the most favourable across a majority of the impact categories, according to a new report.
Commissioned by luxury fashion designer Stella McCartney, the new Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) from third-party certifier SCS Global Services (SCS) compares the environmental performance of ten different raw material sources of MMCF, with the aim of understanding the relative level of impacts on ecosystems associated with the production of each source.
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The report, the scope of which is cradle-to-gate, examines a broad range of environmental issues, from the time raw materials are obtained from global forests, agricultural operations or other sources, through the production of viscose (also known as rayon) and other MMCFs.
It also works to understand the unit processes, which are the biggest contributors to environmental impacts, and is the first study using LCA – an internationally recognised scientific methodology – to assess global sourcing scenarios for all ten raw materials, including an evaluation of specific forests of origin and terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. The study included MMCF sourced from different global forests, eucalyptus plantations, bamboo, cotton-linters, flax fibre and recycled clothing.
According to the report, the choice of raw material input is key to determining the environmental profile of MMCF. While none of the ten raw materials or global sourcing scenarios were environmentally preferable across all impact categories, MMCF made from Belgian flax emerged as favourable across a majority of the impact categories, followed by viscose produced from recycled clothing.
Meanwhile, the analysis found that Asian production from Canadian boreal forest pulp, Chinese production from Indonesian rainforest pulp, Chinese production from Indonesian plantation pulp, and Indian cotton linter pulped in China had the heaviest environmental footprints among the scenarios examined.
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By GlobalData“This is the most comprehensive LCA published evaluating the environmental performance of man-made cellulosic fibres,” says Tobias Schultz, who headed up the project team for SCS as its manager of corporate sustainability services. “We applied the latest science and data, based on a standardised LCA Methodology, to complete the evaluation, which was then peer-reviewed by a multi-stakeholder panel of experts. This level of scrutiny ensures that the report’s findings are robust and reliable.”
Representatives from Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC), the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, and environmental not-for-profit Canopy, participated on the peer review panel.
“This rigorous study provides important new insights into how the choice of fibre source determines the impacts of man-made cellulose fibre on the world’s species, forest ecosystems and freshwater, as well as our global climate and human health,” explains Canopy executive director Nicole Rycroft. “For Canopy, these findings reinforce the need to prioritise and advance commercial-scale production of fabrics made from closed-loop fibre solutions such as agriculture residues and recycled fabrics.”
Click here to access the full report.
