Giving Compass' Take:

• Nathan Hurst explains how research reveals the environmental consequences of individual garments throughout their lifecycle - revealing opportunities to reduce environmental impact.

• How can this sort of assessment be used in other industries? 

• Learn more about the environmental impacts of the apparel industry. 

That T-shirt you’re wearing—do you know how much water was used to make it? How much fuel expended to ship it? How many ounces of scraps were cast aside from the trimmings? Sandra Roos does. A PhD student at Chalmers Institute of Technology in Sweden, Roos performed one of the most comprehensive life cycle analyses ever completed, in the process learning more about the resources and tradeoffs that go into fashion than just about anyone, ever.

With her analysis, Roos, who is studying environmental systems analysis, incorporated several aspects of the life cycle that haven’t been put together, at least not for fashion. The report, published by cross-disciplinary research program Mistra Future Fashion, included the costs of daily use, discard or recycling a garment, and even the fuel to get to the store to buy the thing (an important factor, it turns out). She evaluated different items—five of them, including a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a dress, a jacket, and a hospital uniform—and compared them against each other. Some of what she found was surprising; some not so much. But each bit of information tells us a little more about an industry that can affect our world in ways we don’t comprehend.

Some big takeaways are already clear, like how greatly spin dyeing can reduce water use compared to wet dyeing, or how much smaller the carbon footprint of fabric made from dissolved wood cellulose is, compared to cotton. But while life cycle analyses give a broad understanding of the impacts in a product’s life, the incredible level of detail means that it can’t be performed for every product, and that its relevance to any other product than the subject is limited, says Jason Kibbey, CEO of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. He doesn’t mean Roos’ work, so much as the challenges of translating any life cycle analysis to practical use.

“In general, the issue is, what can you get to scale? There’s a massive plethora of tools out there that have assessed various elements of the supply chain, and there’s a lot to learn from some of that underlying research, and often from those tools themselves,” Kibbey says. “The vast majority of them barely have any users.”

Read the full article about the environmental consequences of fashion by Nathan Hurst at Smithsonian Magazine.