Christina Jönsson

Is unbleached cotton better than bleached? Exploring the limits of life cycle assessment in the textile sector

The applicability of life-cycle assessment (LCA) for the textile industry is discussed with a special focus on environmental impact from chemicals. Together with issues of water depletion and energy use, the use of chemicals and their emissions are important environmental considerations for textile products. However, accounting for chemicals is a weak point in LCA methodology and practice. Two research questions were investigated in a case study of hospital garments: 1) whether LCA adds value to assessments of the chemical performance of textile products, and 2) whether inclusion of toxicity issues in LCA affects environmental performance rankings for textile products. It is concluded that the quantitative and holistic tool LCA is useful for environmental decision makers in the textile industry, and becomes more effective when chemical impacts are included. A flexible way forward is demonstrated to meet the challenge of accounting for chemicals in LCAs of textile products.

Per and polyfluorinated substances in the Nordic Countries: Use, occurence and toxicology

This Tema Nord report presents a study based on open information and custom market research to review the most common perfluorinated substances (PFC) with less focus on PFOS and PFOA.The study incl ...

USEtox characterisation factors for textile chemicals based on a transparent data source selection strategy

PurposeLife cycle assessments (LCAs) of textile products which do not include the use and emission of textile chemicals, such as dyes, softeners and water-repellent agents, will give non-comprehensive results for the toxicity impact potential. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to provide a set of characterisation factors (CFs) for some of the most common textile chemicals and (2) to propose a data source selection strategy in order to increase transparency when calculating new CFs.MethodsA set of 72 common textile-related substances was matched with the USEtox 2.01, USEtox 1.01 and the COSMEDE databases in order to investigate coverage and coherence. For the 25 chemicals that did not already have established CFs in any of these databases, new CFs were calculated. A data source selection strategy was developed and followed in order to ensure consistency and transparency, and USEtox 2.01 was used for calculations. The parameters that caused the most uncertainty were identified during the modelling and strategies for handling them were developed.Results and discussionOf the 72 textile-related substances, 48 already had calculated recommended or indicative CFs in existing databases, which showed good coherence. The main uncertainty identified during the calculation of 25 new CFs was the selection of input data regarding toxicity and degradation in water. However, for substances such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the acid dissociation constant (pKa) and partitioning coefficients (Kow and KOC) also require special considerations. Other input parameters had less than one order of magnitude impact on the CF result for essentially all substances.ConclusionsThe paper presents a strategy for how to provide a complete set of toxicity CFs for a given list of substances. In addition, such a set of CFs for common textile-related substances is presented. The data source selection strategy provides a structured and transparent way of calculating additional CFs for textile chemicals with USEtox. Consequently, this study can help future LCA studies to provide relevant guidance towards environmentally benign chemical management in the textile industry.

Sustainable Chemicals: A Model for Practical Substitution

The textile industry sees currently a fast development of legal and voluntary restrictions of chemicals content in textile products. However, the on-going phase-out work focuses on evaluating the environmental and health aspects of chemicals. The technical performance in the end application for the chemical does not receive the same attention. In addition, many research projects committed to evaluating hazardous substances and their possible alternatives also neglects the technical performance. The technical performance is left to the companies to evaluate. This may lead to inefficiency in the substitution process and also have the consequence that companies never dare to take the step to practical substitution, at least not in a proactive way. This chapter presents a model for practical substitution, developed and evaluated in several case studies, whereof two in the textile field: water and soil repellent textile coating materials and flame retarded textiles. From the general lessons learnt, an improved substitution methodology with widespread applicability has been defined.

An inventory framework for inclusion of textile chemicals in life cycle assessment

PurposeToxicity impacts of chemicals have only been covered to a minor extent in LCA studies of textile products. The two main reasons for this exclusion are (1) the lack of life cycle inventory (LCI) data on use and emissions of textile-related chemicals, and (2) the lack of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) data for calculating impacts based on the LCI data. This paper addresses the first of these two.MethodsIn order to facilitate the LCI analysis for LCA practitioners, an inventory framework was developed. The framework builds on a nomenclature for textile-related chemicals which was used to build up a generic chemical product inventory for use in LCA of textiles. In the chemical product inventory, each chemical product and its content was modelled to fit the subsequent LCIA step. This means that the content and subsequent emission data are time-integrated, including both original content and, when relevant, transformation products as well as impurities. Another key feature of the framework is the modelling of modularised process performance in terms of emissions to air and water.Results and discussionThe inventory framework follows the traditional structure of LCI databases to allow for use together with existing LCI and LCIA data. It contains LCI data sets for common textile processes (unit processes), including use and emissions of textile-related chemicals. The data sets can be used for screening LCA studies and/or, due to their modular structure, also modified. Modified data sets can be modelled from recipes of input chemicals, where the chemical product inventory provides LCA-compatible content and emission data. The data sets and the chemical product inventory can also be used as data collection templates in more detailed LCA studies.ConclusionsA parallel development of a nomenclature for and acquisition of LCI data resulted in the creation of a modularised inventory framework. The framework advances the LCA method to provide results that can guide towards reduced environmental impact from textile production, including also the toxicity impacts from textile chemicals.RecommendationsThe framework can be used for guiding stakeholders of the textile sector in macro-level decisions regarding the effectiveness of different impact reduction interventions, as well as for guiding on-site decisions in textile manufacturing.

Labelling of chemicals in textiles : Nordic Textile Initiative

This report contains an analysis of the needs and barriers for a legal requirement on declaration and/or labelling of chemicals in textiles. The project is a part of the Nordic action plan for text ...