Assessment of Carbon Footprint for the Textile Sector in France

Abstract

Global warming represents a major subject on all society levels including governments, economic actors and citizens. The textile industry is often considered a polluting activity. In this project, French textile manufacturers sought to quantify the carbon footprint (CF) of sold clothes and household linen using Life Cycle Assessment in France for the purpose of reducing it to meet the constraints of Paris Agreement by 2050. First, manufacturers calculated the carbon footprint of 17 clothes and household linen products and established alternative scenarios for four production routes. Secondly, they modeled the supply of the upstream sector through different countries. Based on imports of textile products, their calculated CF for one French person reaches 442 kg of CO2eq/year. Means of action to reduce this carbon footprint by a factor of 6 (74 kg of CO2eq/person/year for textiles) are calculated and are the following: installing the most energy-intensive production processes in a country with a low carbon electricity mix, avoiding unsold goods, implementing eco-design approaches and enhancing the value of end-of-life products with reuse or recycling. Therefore, CF for textiles per capita is reduced to 43 kg CO2eq/year which goes beyond the objectives of Paris Agreement and facilitates carbon neutrality in the textile sector. The first priority for reducing the French carbon footprint of clothes and household linen would be to locate textile production in countries with (i) low carbon electricity, (ii) to reduce unsold items, and (iii) to elaborate ecodesign of product including circular economy.