Wool in Life Cycle Assessments and Design Tools - SIFO

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LCA studies should for example ensure allocation of appropriate environmental burdensharing to co-products of natural fiber production to enable more appropriate comparisons…There is a further need to agree on approaches to balance or weight different environmentalimpacts in a meaningful way for the textile industry so more simplified eco-ratings can bedeveloped for textiles and textile fibers.9. LCA Methodological Problems in the textile Sector“Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) applied in the Textile Sector: the Usefulness, Limitations andMethodological Problems – A Literature Review.” 11 Lisbeth Dahllöf 2004System BoundariesSimplified LCAs do fit into the ISO standards, but it could be tempting to exclude side processes orproducts such as help chemicals without really knowing the extent of environmental burden theycause, with misleading results. Simplified LCAs require experienced practitioners conducting thestudies, and dominance and sensitivity analyses are important to maintain reliability.Functional UnitAccording to ISO 14041 “one of the primary purposes of a functional unit is to provide a reference towhich the input and output data are normalized (in a mathematical sense). Therefore the functionalunit shall be clearly defined and measurable”. In the industrialized world, clothes are not used rightup to the point that they are worn out. If you want to compare a cotton shirt with a shirt made ofpolyester, not only the quality but also the feeling could be an important factor in how long the shirtwill be used. This type of “soft” considerations is better done outside the LCA study. In some cases, amore general functional unit could be used such as “wearing clean clothes per person during a year”which is done in the SusHouse project (Bras-Klapwijk, 2001).Several environmental impacts are usually not considered in LCA studies of textiles, so it is unknownhow serious they are compared to other impacts. Many of them are serious on a local scale butpossibly are unimportant globally. Noise and dust in the working environment are such impacts. Thisin combination with the different origins makes it difficult to compare e.g. polyester and cottonfabrics objectively regarding environmental impact. Some researchers explicitly state that productscannot be compared in an adequate way (e.g. Werner, 2002). Still, studies made to compare thesetextile types show the need for weighting suited to the textile sector (Kalliala, 1997, Svensson E.,1995, Svensson E., 1997).When reading an LCA report, it is important to know that LCA studies usually describe global orregional effects and not local ones, although they may assess these. Solvent emission from a plantmay be insignificant on a global scale but still cause problems to man and nature in the immediatesurroundings. Research is being done on describing the local effects and fitting them into the LCAframework (Baumann and Tillman 2004).AllocationsAllocation choice is particularly important for sheep farming and wool production; For almost allcountries producing wool, it is a secondary product of meat production, but in Australia, the largest11 an excerpt of findings from Dahllöfs studies and thesis, on main challenges that apply for textilesin general and wool in particular. (kk2011)14
wool producing country in the world, wool is the primary product (Ellebäk Laursen, et al, 1997). It istherefore not evident how to allocate, and it is necessary to allocate differently for different cases.One should be careful when drawing general conclusions from an LCA study. The results cannot, forinstance, be used without modifications, if fabrics for clothes are to be assessed. The use phasewould then be of greater importance, because of more frequent cleaning of the fabric. (Dahllöf)10. Reflections on LCA in generalTo conduct LCA reports is a time- and money consuming activity that is mostly done by midsized andlarge companies. x% of Norwegian companies do not see any value added. Reports easily end up in adesk drawer. Money and time spent is useless if the result is not used as a basis for strategic choicesof environmental improvements at various points in a life cycle of a product, or for finding relevantenvironmental indicators that can be used for future developments and comparing.A lot of the criticism against LCA comes from the LCA scientific community. Issues that are discussedare; wrong results as result of wrong defined system boundaries, (Callaghan og Allen: 1994),complicated data collection (Ayres: 1995), uncertainties on choice of method (Fava: 1997) andchallenging interpretations. (Finnveden: 2000)It is important to realize that LCA is one tool among other tools to evaluate environmental impacts.Other tools include Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Sustainable Development Records(SDR) (Tillman et al, 1997)Generally LCA is focused upon what harm a product makes, counting the negative impacts on theenvironment. Some positive impacts like recycled content or use of renewable energy are more andmore being considered. Still it is not a tool for reporting good news, just the bad and the less bad.In the jungle of dataLCAs have different figures on the same impacts, depending on the many variables that define theanalyzed system. If the framework is not communicated well or not understood it is a source tomisunderstandings and misinterpreting. Different databases use data from different global regions.Data change with time and technology, and many LCA are already old and outdated in their datafacts. This might get very confusing and misleading to the user.One example; In a LCA on New Zealand Merino (Barber and Pellow 2004) they refer to FranklinAssociates (1993) stating the average carbon dioxide emission factor for polyester to be 6,9 kgCO2/kg PET. Looking into Franklin Associates (USA) studies on PET for drinking bottles (2007) itstates 3,28 kg CO2/kg PET, which is more corresponding with the European Ecoinvent Database atthe same time(2008). Both figures are based upon average energy mix from the grid, both US andEurope.What happened? Has the production of PET changed? Has the energy input and source changed?Was it a US number compared with an European number? Did Barber and Pellow (2006) misinterpretthe numbers from Franklin Associates like that the numbers were per kg and not per functional unit?Or did I miss something when reading? The answer may be found in all areas.Another example is the variety range in eg energy data. Risks in this case are individualinterpretations or being mistaken by accident, or not having the necessary skills to interpret the rightway, or by using old data. It also shows a possibility for manipulation of results by choosing thepreferred data.15
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Page 3 and 4: 1. IntroductionSeveral tools have e
Page 5: 3. SummaryLife Cycle Analysis (LCA)
Page 8 and 9: LCA based fiber assessments5. MadeB
Page 12 and 13: asis. The financial approach is sus
Page 16 and 17: Textile Fibre Energy Use example (M
Page 18 and 19: To get wool out of the bad-guy posi
Page 20 and 21: 13. EcoMetricsEcometrics 13 was dev
Page 22 and 23: 14. Nike Environmental Apparel Desi
Page 24 and 25: This comparison method is an easy w
Page 26 and 27: must not be lost after they have be

Wool in Life Cycle Assessments and Design Tools - SIFO

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