Multi-dimensional Sustainability Evaluation of Indigo Rope Dyeing with a life cycle approach and hesitant fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

Abstract

The dyeing process of denim fabric production has the highest potential for significant environmental and human health impacts of denim production, consuming vast amounts of water, chemicals, and dyes. This study aims to assess the sustainability of indigo rope dyeing (IRD) obtained by designing a new recipe with the chemical alternative assessment method. Not only environmental impacts, but also social, economic, and product quality dimensions were included in the multidimensional sustainability assessment. The hesitant fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (HF-AHP) method was used to determine the criteria weights of the determined dimensions. The environmental and social impacts of the existing and newly designed IRD process were evaluated using the gate-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) approach. According to the LCA results, the green IRD process exhibited better performance in terms of all environmental impacts evaluated and the abiotic depletion potential of the conventional indigo IRD process can be reduced by 62.55% by applying the green IRD process. According to the HF-AHP results, the most important criteria were environmental impact with 33%, followed by social impacts with 27%, quality results with 23%, and economic results with 17% in assessing the IRD process's sustainability denim production. These results showed that the sustainability of the IRD process could be improved by substituting the chemicals and dyestuff with green alternatives.