Textile Exchange issued a comprehensive call for improved integrity in the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data, as misuse may lead to a false sense of holistic sustainability that risks undermining the industry’s environmental efforts.
The sustainability trade group’s latest position paper, “Ensuring Integrity in the Use of Life Cycle Assessment Data,” outlines best practices for responsibly using LCA data in the fashion industry and apparel sector at large.
Ideally, it’ll provide industry players guidance on how to use the recognized framework and—of equal importance—how not to use it, Textile Exchange said, noting the paper forms part of the multi-stakeholder group’s commitment to convene actors across the supply chain and gumshoe accurate impact data for the industry today.
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While LCA studies are still the No. 1 method for evaluating the broader scale impacts, given their adaptability across supply chain stages, geographies and environmental scopes, the Burbank-based organization stressed their limitations, urging the industry to adopt a more holistic approach.
“Current LCA reports are not all-encompassing when it comes to capturing the full range of impacts associated with a given product—or, in the case of Textile Exchange’s LCAs, a fiber or material,” the position paper reads. Those limitations considered how the method’s inherently static nature challenges efforts to benchmark continuous progress tracking, given that LCAs measure impact(s) at a single point in time.
LCA studies can also average impacts across various locations or geographies—which may not represent location-specific differences and consequently lose contextual nuances. Plus, natural and synthetic fibers have fundamentally different production systems, which leads to various system boundaries in LCAs—a key reason why Textile Exchange discourages such comparisons.
Included in the paper was a call for industry-wide integrity in the use of LCA data, listing nine addressing these issues to ensure integrity. Those suggestions posit only using LCA data when there’s complete understanding of the key assumptions, methods and use cases, maintaining supplier-specific data (and data from well-documented LCA studies) for Scope 3 footprinting, using industry databases with a grain of salt and adopting the “LCA+ approach” that considers context-specific aspects.
“Establishing a shared understanding of its appropriate uses is crucial, along with recognizing the need to move beyond current LCA metrics to capture a more holistic view of environmental, social and animal welfare impacts,” Textile Exchange said.
To that end, Textile Exchange created an open source library of the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data. It houses the underlying input/output data from LCA studies and is available publicly—meaning data can be entered and extracted—to enable greater efficiency in impact reporting, plus increased quantity and availability of representative LCA data, too.
“This is pre-existing data that has already been collected,” Textile Exchange said, “to which companies can apply their relevant parameters/assumptions and reduce the burden of primary data collection which is typically the most time and resource intensive step of an LCA study.”
“Ensuring Integrity in the Use of Life Cycle Assessment Data” was published ahead of seven LCA studies that Textile Exchange is conducting to “accelerate collective efforts to address key LCA data gaps,” the industry body said, focusing on raw material extraction and, in some cases, primary processing impacts.
The nonprofit’s study on cotton—spanning organic, conventional, recycled and regenerative —is slated for this year’s last quarter. The respective studies on cashmere, Responsible Mohair Standard (RMS) and polyester (recycled and virgin) should publish during 2025’s fourth quarter as well.
The study on Responsible Wool Standard (RWS) wool should drop during the second quarter of 2026, while the study on leather (bovine, ovine and caprine) will drop during 2026’s fourth quarter. The final LCA, of nylon, is slated for Q2 2027 publication.
“This new resource aims to help establish a shared understanding of the appropriate use of LCA while promoting the need to move beyond current LCA metrics to capture a more holistic view of impact on people, animals and the planet,” Fashion for Good posted on LinkedIn. The Amsterdam initiative provided support outlining the paper’s recommendations, as did the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii).
“The paper is for anyone looking to develop a greater understanding of the use of LCA data in the textile industry—particularly for brands using LCA data directly or those who rely on it for their impact modeling or progress tracking.”
