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Life Cycle Assessment of Technical Textile Waste: Pilot Evaluation of Environmental Impacts
Yasin Sohail, D Sun
To cite this version:
Yasin Sohail, D Sun. Life Cycle Assessment of Technical Textile Waste: Pilot Evaluation of En- vironmental Impacts. 2nd International Forum on Textiles for Graduate Students 2018 - Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin, China, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin, China, Sep 2018, Tianjin, China. �hal-02133644�
The Second International Forum on Textiles for Graduate Students
Life Cycle Assessment of Technical Textile Waste: Pilot Evaluation of Environmental Impacts
S. Yasin and D. Sun
School of Textiles and Design, Heriot-Watt University, Galashiels TD1 3HF, United Kingdom
Abstract: Gate-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used for environmental impact assessment of one-ton flame retarded cotton, from the final manufactured product to disposal.
Use phase of flame retarded textile is delocalized to the country it’s washed and dried in, the United Kingdom. The real end-of-life scenarios were considered, landfill and valorization without energy. The obvious difficulty was lack of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data from the manufacturing unit of technical textile and the regulations of the country it’s produced in. The assessment of environmental impacts consisting of the inputs (energy, water, chemicals etc.) and the outputs was characterized to major pollution categories.
Introduction
The textile recycling industry is one of the most established businesses in the world; yet far from the sustainability, especially the technical textiles. It has a huge demand for water and toxic chemicals, such as dyes and functionality chemicals in the manufacturing phase [1], [2].
The water treatment of technical textiles, such as flame retardants, nano-coated, thermal attributed, and other functional textiles have received a very little attention. This led to a gap in the literature, for instance, toxicity and associated post disposal environmental issues of textile waste [3]. Therefore, a pilot evaluation of environmental impact of technical textile waste is carried out in this study with the sustainability assessment tool, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is implemented to a greater extent from the last two decades by many apparels and textile organizations. LCA can supply a detailed guide for identification of processes, alternates in favor of the environmental impacts and decision makings. In many study cases, LCA develops interpretations in accordance with International Standard Organization (ISO) provisions and the results are usually kept in the boundaries of an organization or a company. Also, with a recent growth in LCA work, most of the results on LCA related to textile products are limited to scientific literature. Accordingly, there are not enough databases of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and open source literature to ensemble further research studies. LCA need to take into account the impact of production delocalization to emerging countries for textile production-consumption chain [4], [5].
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In this study, production phase is omitted and gate-to-grave LCA is considered, considering the UK as the use and disposal phase. Another scope is the textile product selection: flame retardant cotton textile was selected for the LCA, regardless of product type. Lastly, the assessment of environmental impacts consisting of the inputs (energy, water, chemicals etc.…) and the outputs was characterized to major pollution categories.
The functional unit is defined as: “1000 kg flame retarded cotton textile and use for 10 years”.
All the processes which are considered important in the use phase or usage, such as washing and drying chose, with 60 laundering times. The external factors such as electricity and detergent manufacturing, transportation to the disposal, and end-of-life scenarios, landfill and incineration were taken into consideration. The LCA study was carried out according to ISO 14040 (E. ISO, 2006) and ISO 14044 (I. ISO, 2006) standards. EIME software (Bureau Veritas, CODDE) was used. Whereas, the characterized toxicity impact categories studied were; air acidification (AA), air toxicity (AT), freshwater ecotoxicity (FWE), global warming potential (GWP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), raw material depletion (RMD), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), water depletion (WD) and water eutrophication (WE).
Results and Discussion
The general LCA results of major atmospheric pollutants in use-disposal phase are illustrated in Fig. 1. The washing of cotton textiles involves heavy energy consumption for machinery, detergents, and infrastructure, which later results in higher environmental impacts [1], [2]. Moreover, the production of flame retardant textiles also poses an environmental concern while washing or use phase, as it leads to leaching of chemicals into the environment [3].
Fig. 1. Overall LCA for flame retarded cotton, gate-to-grave landfill scenario for toxicity impact categories; air acidification (AA), air toxicity (AT), freshwater ecotoxicity (FWE), global warming
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potential (GWP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), raw material depletion (RMD), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), water depletion (WD) and water eutrophication (WE)
Since use phase came out with one of the highest impact values, it’s important to discuss energy consumption in product’s lifecycle. Different textile products have variant manufacturing and washing energies, depending upon individual case studies.
Likewise, a cotton brief weighing about 216 grams utilizes 78.5% of its consumption energy, whereas, polyester blouse weighing 54 grams uses 2% of its consumption energy [1].
Fig. 2. Overall LCA for flame retarded cotton, gate-to-grave incineration without energy scenario for toxicity impact categories; air acidification (AA), air toxicity (AT), freshwater ecotoxicity (FWE), global warming potential (GWP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), raw material depletion (RMD), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), water depletion (WD) and water eutrophication (WE)
The energy consumption and emission values in the consumption phase depend upon a number of factors such as; the number of washes and weight of textile products. As flame retarded cotton textiles (curtain, sofas, firefighter clothing etc.) are washed once a season per year during a period of use of ten years, it has same energy consumption per wash as compared to cotton briefs, polyester trousers and jeans [6]. The energy consumption in consumption phase is also “case to case” and country dependent, as the consumption of resources and machinery are different in different countries. Likely, any textile product which is washed less, formerly discarded immediately, will primarily have lower environmental impacts in consumption phase. According to functional units of ten years, the production phase will increase as the demand for buying a new product will increase [1].
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From Fig. 2, lower environmental values for the incineration scenario as end-of-life phase is taken as an environmental benefit instead of landfilled. And, clearly, incineration scenario at the end-of-life is in favor of the indicators responsible for lower impacts at disposal. As mentioned earlier, the expected uncertainties in this study are to occur due to lack of descriptive data for the end-of-life phase of textiles, especially technical textiles. This preliminary evaluation elaborates the importance of LCI data for technical textile finishing species or substances, which can be helpful to portrait real environmental scenarios of technical textile wastes.
Conclusions
The LCA results of any textile products over the entire production-usage-disposal chain are usually case dependent. There is stringent need for LCI data for technical textiles, in order to cope with its waste at end-of-life. The outcomes from this study enhance the developing body of knowledge in the global community of LCA community and can motivate other textile-related industries to compute their resources and decrease the environmental impacts in order to improve their products and services.
Acknowledgments
This research was carried out in the framework of Commonwealth Rutherford Fellowships.
References
[1] S. Yasin, N. Behary, G. Rovero, and V. Kumar, ‘Statistical analysis of use-phase energy consumption of textile products’, Int. J. Life Cycle Assess., vol. 21, no. 12, pp. 1776–1788, 2016.
[2] S. Yasin, ‘Eco-design for end-of-life phase of flame retardant textiles’, PhD Thesis, Université Lille 1-Sciences et Technologies, 2017.
[3] S. Yasin, N. Behary, M. Curti, and G. Rovero, ‘Global Consumption of Flame Retardants and Related Environmental Concerns: A Study on Possible Mechanical Recycling of Flame Retardant Textiles’, Fibers, vol. 4, no. 2, p. 16, 2016.
[4] J. Potting and K. Blok, ‘Life-cycle assessment of four types of floor covering’, J. Clean.
Prod., vol. 3, pp. 201–2013, 1995.
[5] S. Yasin, N. Behary, A. Perwuelz, and J. Guan, ‘Life cycle assessment of flame retardant cotton textiles with optimized end-of-life phase’, J. Clean. Prod., vol. 172, pp. 1080–1088, 2018.
[6] S. Yasin, M. Curti, and G. Rovero, ‘Waste management of flame retardant textiles: an
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alternate end-of-life design for flame retardant textile products’, in LCA Waste, Italy, 2016.
