Abstract
Clothing maintenance is necessary for keeping clothing and textiles functional and socially acceptable, but it has environmental consequences due to the use of energy, water and chemicals. This article discusses whether clothes made of different materials are cleaned in different ways and have different environmental impacts. It fills a knowledge gap needed in environmental assessments that evaluate the impacts based on the function of a garment by giving detailed information on the use phase. The article is based on a quantitative wardrobe survey and qualitative laundry diary data from China, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA. The largest potential for environmental improvement exists in reducing laundering frequency and in the selection of washing and drying processes, and through a transition to fibres that are washed less frequently, such as wool. Adopting best practice garment care would give larger benefits in countries like the US where the consumption values were the highest, mainly due to extensive use of clothes dryers and less efficient washing machines combined with frequent cleaning. These variations should be considered in environmental assessments of clothing and when forming sustainability policies. The results indicate the benefits of focusing future environmental work on consumer habits and culture and not only technologies.
Highlights
Textiles surround us in our everyday lives in the form of clothes, bed linen, carpets, curtains and other household textiles we use to warm, protect, dry, clean and decorate ourselves and our homes
Life cycle assessments (LCA) of clothing have indicated that length of the use phase, as well as maintenance, are decisive for impact assessment [6], and in many cases, the use phase has the highest environmental impacts for many key indicators [7,8,9,10]
The Carbon Trust has estimated that the use phase of clothing is a major climate gas contributor with 530MtCO2e emissions per year through laundering, drying, ironing and dry cleaning [14], which equates roughly to the annual CO2 emissions from 136 coal-fired power plants [15]
Summary
Textiles surround us in our everyday lives in the form of clothes, bed linen, carpets, curtains and other household textiles we use to warm, protect, dry, clean and decorate ourselves and our homes. Clothing care has environmental consequences, including water pollution, eutrophication, greenhouse gas emissions and potential toxicity impacts [12]. Electricity use alone equates to 47.5 MtCO2e emissions [13]. These figures exclude other laundry care activities such as professional and industrial laundering, washing by hand, use of clothes dryers, ironing, dry cleaning, and use of laundromats or shared laundry facilities. The Carbon Trust has estimated that the use phase of clothing is a major climate gas contributor with 530MtCO2e emissions per year through laundering, drying, ironing and dry cleaning [14], which equates roughly to the annual CO2 emissions from 136 coal-fired power plants [15]
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