Carbon footprint of t-shirts made of cotton, polyester or viscose
by Junran Liu; Lirong Sun; Yiqi Guo; Wei Bao; Ying Zhang; Laili Wang
International Journal of Global Warming (IJGW), Vol. 30, No. 3, 2023

Abstract: Carbon footprint (CFP) is an effective tool for calculating and assessing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals in a product life cycle using a single impact category of climate change. This study performed the CFP calculation and assessment for cotton t-shirt, polyester t-shirt and viscose t-shirt, complying with the system boundary from raw material extraction phase to end-of-life. Results demonstrated that yarn manufacturing contributes most of the CFP (36.1%-50.5%), followed by the product use phase (30.6%-48.3%) and fabric manufacture phase (19.6%-20.3%). Energy consumption is the main contributor to CFP in production processes. Additionally, the carbon sequestration effect of plant-derived fibres such as cotton and viscose played an important role to offset GHG emissions in the life cycle of t-shirts. The effect of carbon sequestration is more significant with the increase of product service life. Findings of this study can provide carbon emission reduction references for enterprises and consumers. In order to reduce the CFP in the entire life cycle of t-shirts, it was recommended that enterprises need to innovate production technology and increase the proportion of renewables in energy structures to replace the use of fossil energy, and consumers prolong the life cycle of products.

Online publication date: Fri, 09-Jun-2023

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