A cotton coalition has released new guidelines on lifecycle assessments (LCA) to help the fashion industry and textile sector use them more effectively and reliably: Alongside complementary methodologies. The reason? Carbon-tunnel vision.
“LCAs are like looking through a keyhole,” Jesse Daystar, chief sustainability officer at Cotton Incorporated, said. “You certainly see something, but it’s never the full picture.”
The network of multistakeholder initiatives—Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), Cotton Incorporated, Cotton Australia and the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol—is calling for stronger methodological discipline in how lifecycle assessments are conducted and communicated.
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The consortium’s report, “From Data to Impact: How to Get Cotton LCAs Right,” calls for LCAs to be applied alongside verified field data to deliver credible, transparent and farmer-forward sustainability progress. The guidelines call for LCAs to be used alongside primary data collection methods to optimize field-level insights and support holistic, data-driven sustainability communications.
“With stronger methodological discipline and clearer communication, the cotton sector can ensure that sustainability claims are science-based, data-backed and farmer-informed,” Lars van Doremalen, director of impact at the Better Cotton Initiative, said. “The path forward demands coordinated action from companies, initiatives and policymakers that’s grounded in scientific integrity, acknowledgement of limitations and real-world applicability.”
The paper—supported by Cascale, Textile Exchange and the Cotton Research and Development Corporation—argues that LCAs are often misused across the apparel sector.
In essence, simplified LCAs can create a “carbon-tunnel vision,” per the paper, which can distract efforts from other critical impacts—like those surrounding biodiversity and labor conditions—that lead to inaccurate claims about a product’s “true sustainability.” By making comparisons between regions or programs that aren’t actually aligned—or relying on data that isn’t contextually accurate—brands risk damaging their reputation and consumer trust in their sustainability efforts.
And this misapplication, whether through inappropriate comparisons and limited context, or a disregard for methodological boundaries, risks undermining both consumer and stakeholder trust in sustainability claims and data integrity—and misleading investments and interventions.
Cascale’s Joël Mertens further outlined the problem.
“What can I really claim in terms of making change happen? It’s one thing to say, ‘This is my footprint,’ and another to claim that switching from cotton to another fiber or blend has helped improve climate change or water scarcity,” said Mertens, head of Higg product tools at Cascale, noting it’s the last piece in particular that’s misleading. “The approach that moves the sector forward is fixing the supply change instead of ignoring the problem by going somewhere else without moving the state of play.”
That said, LCAs are helpful; the report underlines that LCAs can help identify and prioritize environmental interventions, support regulatory compliance and track long-term trends. And with that said, LCAs don’t cover social indicators or short-term changes in farming practices—what the consortium said, therefore, presents a simplified picture of farm-level realities.
“We’ve identified that improving nitrogen use efficiency is a priority for reducing our carbon footprint and LCA doesn’t do anything to a help a farmer to reduce it,” Allan Williams, executive director of the CRDC, said, nothing it’s not possible to do an LCA on the range of nitrogen management options because the underpinning science of the emissions associated with those options simply isn’t there.
“LCA doesn’t add anything for a farmer at the moment,” he continued. “Our focus is to invest in the fundamental research so we can understand which practices have the most impact rather than just collecting data for the sake of an LCA.”
To bolster LCA literacy, brands should strategically invest in training programs for internal teams and supply chain stakeholders, per the paper. For policymakers and regulators, the coalition suggested establishing policy platforms that bring together various players—like governments, industry actors, standards setters and civil society—to co-develop fair and credible LCA frameworks while ensuring alignment, not fragmentation.
“LCAs can be a powerful tool for progress, but they must be applied with transparency and context,” said Daren Abney, executive director of the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol. “By improving LCA literacy and aligning on how results are applied, we can ensure data drives the right kind of impact.”
Ultimately, the cotton consortium sees the paper functioning as a platform and calls for collaborative action—not an endpoint.
“LCA definitely has use but is it not the holy grail, it is not a silver bullet solution,” Deepika Mishra, standards and data lead for the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol, said. “The world is working on LCAs but not taking any of this to the field, to farmers. Understanding what the numbers mean should be the starting point of conversation.”
The position paper was produced by consultancy Earthshift Global and funded by the Better Cotton Initiative, Cotton Incorporated, Cotton Australia and the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol. Cascale, Textile Exchange and the Cotton Research and Development Corporation supported its development.
“Real progress will come from investment in farmer-centered improvements backed by science and transparency, aligning around responsible use of LCAs,” the paper’s final call to action reads. “The sector must collaborate to ensure that LCA tunnel vision does not distort the path to sustainability.”
