Environmental assessment of fabric wet processing from gate-to-gate perspective: Comparative study of weaving and materials

Cleaner production evaluation system for textile industry: An empirical study from LCA perspectives

The contradiction between the rapid textile expansion and intensive energy consumption, highly environmental pollution calls for the adoption of cleaner production (CP). However, current evaluation system mainly targeted on CP at production stage, guidance and support on the life cycle assessment is still in its infancy. Meanwhile few studies brought the combination of water conservation and carbon reduction into considerations. This study compared the existing CP evaluation systems including guidelines for the whole industry, standards for textile industry and indicators for the dyeing and finishing sector by quantifying the differences of indicator score compositions. Comparisons analysis from six aspects suggested that all the evaluation systems had relevant indicators regarding "pollutant emissions". "Management", "process equipment and techniques" and "resource and energy consumption" have also been well concerned while "product characteristic" seemed to be overlooked at current stage. From the perspective of whole life cycle, the key of textile processing is the "printing and dyeing" (44.23 %) followed by "fabric manufacturing"(28.85 %) and setting (15.38 %). With regards to the environmental impacts, resources depletion gained the highest attention since their indicator scores reached up to 25.71 %, 18.47 % and 20.62 % for EMAS, ERG 2018 and HJ-1852006. Cleaner production awareness and social impact also played significant roles in ISO 14031:2021 and WMG. Subsequently, a set of new comprehensive CP evaluation indicator system was established, including 3 scopes and 7 goals. The newly-built indicator system incorporated with life cycle perspectives gave a powerful tool to measure the CP level in textile industry and of CP will benefit from water reuse and energy utilization with high efficiency.

Use of life cycle assessment as a tool to evaluate the environmental impacts of textile effluents: a systematic review

The textile industry is known for its large consumption of water, energy, and chemical products, making it one of the most environmentally impactful activities. To measure these environmental impacts, life cycle analysis (LCA) is a powerful tool that considers the entire process, from the extraction of raw materials to the finalization of textile products. In this context, this work aimed to present a systematic study on the use of the LCA methodology in the environmental assessment of effluents from the textile industry. The survey for data was carried out using the Scopus and Web of Science databases, and the PRISMA method was utilized for organizing and selecting of articles. During the meta-analysis phase bibliometric and specific data were extracted from selected publications. For the bibliometric analysis, a quali-quantitative approach was adopted, and the VOSviewer software was employed. The review encompasses a total of 29 articles, which were published between 1996 and 2023.The majority of the reviewed articles have shown the use of the LCA as a supportive tool for optimization focusing on sustainability, comparing the environmental, economic, and technical aspects through different approaches. The findings revel that China has the highest number of authors among the selected articles, while researchers from France and Italy had the highest number of international collaborations. The ReCiPe and CML methods were the most frequently used for evaluating life cycle inventories, with global warming, terrestrial acidification, ecotoxicity, and ozone depletion being the main impact categories. The use of activated carbon in textile effluents treatment has shown to be promising since it is environmentally friendly.