Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

A life cycle assessment follows the ISO 14040/14044 methodology, working through four defined steps — goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation — to add up water use, energy use, and emissions at every stage a garment passes through: growing or extruding the fiber, spinning and knitting, dyeing and finishing, cutting and sewing, shipping, the customer's own washing and drying, and finally landfill or recycling. Tools like the Higg Materials Sustainability Index run on aggregated LCA data so brands don't have to commission a fresh study for every fabric.

What surprises most buyers is how much of a garment's total impact sits outside the factory gate entirely — dyeing and finishing routinely rank among the highest-impact stages, and for garments that get washed often, the use phase can rival manufacturing itself. We've had eco-minded clients assume the sustainable part of a shirt was all about the cotton field, only to find the wet-processing stage at the mill carried the bigger number.

When a supplier cites an eco-claim, ask which system boundary their study used — cradle-to-gate, through the factory door, versus cradle-to-grave, through disposal — because a low-impact claim measured only to the factory gate is leaving out the stages a full assessment would include.

The mistake we see constantly is buyers assuming any environmental study qualifies as this kind of assessment. A single water-use figure from one factory audit is not a life cycle assessment; a real one accounts for every stage with a defined boundary and is usually reviewed by a third party before a brand can cite it in marketing.