Chapters authored
Understanding Denim Recycling: A Quantitative Study with Lifecycle Assessment Methodology
Global denim jeans market size is over 70 billion dollars today, and it continues to grow with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2%. As a reflection of this annual growth, systems’ waste generation also increases. Textile waste including denim accounts for nearly 5% of all landfill space, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Today, efficient recycling technologies are essential to revive the waste generated. Recycling technologies potentially represent a new way to engineer products. This book chapter analyzes these different recycling technologies and their advantages and challenges and concentrates on denim fabrics produced with recycled content. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is adopted to quantify and compare the environmental impact of recycled denim fabrics. The chapter concludes the challenges and the future of recycling, creating systems, and engineering of waste. The view of seeing waste as a raw material potentially represents a new opportunity to design circular systems.
Part of the book: Waste in Textile and Leather Sectors
Life-Cycle Assessment as a Next Level of Transparency in Denim Manufacturing
Increased consumer awareness and new regulations about climate change accelerated the need for solid, provable, transparent actions leading to results to support the sustainability claims and initiatives of fashion brands. However, progress on transparency is still very limited despite the alarming signals of climate change. As stated in Fashion Revolution’s Transparency Index 2023, brands have achieved an overall average score of 24%, up 1% from last year. Transparency is a tool for transformation. A productive conversation toward the targets can only start with a certain level of transparency to lead to the desired change. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology represents the next level of transparency. LCA can help brands collect, analyze and monitor their sustainability performance with science-based results. It is a tool that is used to quantify the environmental performance of a product taking the complete life cycle into account (from raw material production to transport, fabric production, garment manufacturing, consumer use, and final disposal. This book chapter focuses on how brands can use LCA as a transparency tool, its advantages and challenges in generalizing the science-based data. A framework will be generated on how to build the LCA model and use the data to compare different products and production practices in denim industry.
Part of the book: Life Cycle Assessment