Abstract
The textile industry is recognized as being one of the most polluting industries. Thus, the European Union aims to transform the textile industry with its “European Green Deal” and “Circular Economy Action Plan”. Awareness regarding the environmental impact of textiles is increasing and initiatives are appearing to make more sustainable products with a strong wish to move towards a circular economy. One of these initiatives is wear2wearTM, a collaboration consisting of multiple companies aiming to close the loop for polyester textiles. However, designing a circular product system does not lead automatically to lower environmental impacts. Therefore, a Life Cycle Assessment study has been conducted in order to compare the environmental impacts of a circular with a linear workwear jacket. The results show that a thoughtful “circular economy system” design approach can result in significantly lower environmental impacts than linear product systems. The study illustrates at the same time the necessity for Life Cycle Assessment practitioners to go beyond a simple comparison of one product to another when it comes to circular economy. Such products require a wider system analysis approach that takes into account multiple loops, having interconnected energy and material flows through reuse, remanufacture, and various recycling practices.
Highlights
The textile industry is recognized as being one of the most polluting industries in the world [1]
The results of this study show that the wear2wearTM jacket does perform better among a wide range of environmental categories compared to a traditional linear produced jacket, because well implemented Circular Economy (CE) principles allow for the substitution of primary materials with secondary ones
The results show that the circular product system tremendously improves the environmental performance among all eleven included impact categories
Summary
The textile industry is recognized as being one of the most polluting industries in the world [1]. Textile production causes various environmental impacts covering issues such as global warming, water scarcity, and land-use changes [2,3]. Those impacts are expected to become more severe due to the increasing demands for textiles driven by a higher global income levels per-capita and shorter clothing utilization phases known as “fast fashion” [4]. CE promises to create economic value while lowering the environmental impacts of production through reducing resource consumption, reusing products, and recycling materials [7,8]. A recent report has shown that CE strategies have the potential—if correctly implemented—to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than a third while lowering the demand for resources by more than a quarter [9]
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