Is Made-By’s Environmental Benchmark for Fibres – which compares the environmental impact of the most commonly used fibres in the garment industry – too inflexible to provide an accurate and true comparison between oil and plant-based fibres such as cotton and polyester, and animal fibres such as wool? John Mowbray looks at the evidence.
We approached Made-By after learning of new scientific research which suggests wool could be scoring poorly in rating systems such as Made-By's Environmental Benchmark, as well as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition's Higg Index, due to the misrepresentative, historic LCAs upon which wool's environmental score is currently based. The research proposes new methods for use in LCAs where wool is produced alongside meat or milk, and highlights case studies which suggest this would lead to a much lower environmental impact being allocated to wool.
Put simply, sheep farming produces several products – wool, meat and sometimes milk. At present, many existing LCAs – upon which the likes of Made-By base their environmental scoring for wool – use an ‘economic allocation’ method in terms of ‘allocating’ the environmental impact for these different products. What this means in the instance of co-products from sheep is that wool is ‘allocated’ an environmental burden which is proportionate to the amount of economic revenue it generates relative to the other co-products – meat and milk – from the sheep.
“If the market value of wool rises relative to the co-product (say, lamb) then the environmental burden allocated to wool increases,” Beverley Henry, an associate professor and principal research fellow at the Institute for Future Environments, Queensland University of Technology told Ecotextile News, highlighting one of several anomalies posed by the ‘economic allocation’ method in LCAs.
ISO 14044 provides a hierarchy of recommended methods for allocation in LCAs, with economic being the least preferred. However, as Henry points point, “economic allocation has been most commonly applied in the past because data is readily and conveniently available.”
The new study, funded by the Australian Government and Australian wool growers through Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) and also supported by the International Wool Textile Organisation (IWTO), saw researchers examine seven different methods for handling co-products from case study sheep farms in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
The researchers proposed a method that allocates environmental impact on the basis of the protein requirements for wool and meat production. "As both meat and wool are protein-based products, and wool production is largely determined by protein requirements, this is a logical basis for allocation," they suggested.
Dr Paul Swan, general manager research at AWI and chair of the IWTO’s Sustainable Practices Working Group said: "As a tool, LCA has its limitations. A lot of the time these limitations relate to assumptions that are being used and their lack of consistency. Many of the assumptions that are currently used for basic LCA are very unhelpful for wool. This research exposes some of the weaknesses in the system.”
"Based on these findings, we could expect to see very different environmental impacts attributable to wool if we study a change in wool production compared to simply looking at historical averages," added the study's lead author Stephen Wiedemann.
We approached Made-By with these findings, and asked whether it might consider re-thinking how it ‘scores’ wool in its Environmental Benchmark. Made-By told us: “Whilst the steering committee will guide the final direction of the Fibre Benchmark [which is currently under consideration] our current understanding is that both ISO and the FAO’s Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) methodology guidelines generally prefer economic allocation of environmental burdens between co-products in these scenarios. [editor’s note: LEAP Guidelines for small ruminants (sheep and goats) recommends biophysical allocation for the sheep farm stage but economic for subsequent stages.] This represents the intention behind production (i.e. to supply a demand for different products, for example rearing sheep for wool and meat) and can be applicable to different cases where co-products are closely coupled or uncoupled (i.e. sheep rearing will result in both wool and meat whereas wood pulp processing could be exclusively focused on viscose production or other products).
“The research paper [mentioned above] recommends that regardless of allocation method chosen, results should be presented for all co-products to avoid risks of burden shifting. Whilst this can be done in an academic context, it is usually less practical in industry applications; particularly as the focus of the Fibre Benchmark and other industry tools is informed decision-making for brands and retailers. Because of this, allocation must be completed to model the impacts of co-products which are in scope of our tools, and it would be impractical to add products such as meat or cottonseed oil. In addition, the majority of existing LCAs adopt methodologies that use economic allocation, and as such applying varying methodologies for different fibres could risk making the results incompatible with each other. Maintaining equivalent allocation assessment methodologies for different fibres also ensures a ‘level playing field’ and more readily allows direct comparison between fibres …”
One might deduce from this response that wool simply does not fit readily into Made-By’s scoring tool – which could, in turn, mean that attempting a direct comparison with other fibres may lead to misleading guidance for brands and consumers. We put this point to Beverley Henry, who also chairs the AWI Wool LCA TAG and was the co-author of the allocation paper cited in this article.
She told us: “I think you are correct in that the supply chain for animal fibres does not readily fit into the framework suited to oil and plant-based fibres. The first stage of each supply chain is the production of the fibre ‘raw materials’. Considering fibre from ruminant animals, the first farm stage is unique in two respects – there are multiple high value products (meat, wool and milk from sheep), and animal production is the dominant contribution to environmental impact categories such as GHG emissions.
She adds: “In the remainder of the wool value chain, the stages that take greasy wool through processing, manufacture and distribution, use and recycling/disposal, are not greatly different to those for other textiles (notwithstanding the unique characteristics of wool that give benefits in use and recycling). For these stages the co-product considerations are not dissimilar to those for other textiles, e.g. scouring giving clean wool and lanolin, is comparable to ginning gives cotton fibre and cotton seed. In each case, both products have value but there is a clear major product. Economic allocation has been shown to be able to be conveniently applied without major loss of accuracy relative to biophysical allocation.”
Responding directly to the issues raised by Made-By, Henry says: “Made-By make a good point in stating that applying varying methodologies for allocation is to be avoided. In fact the inconsistency in reporting LCA for wool between studies and the resultant confusion for consumers, brands and other stakeholders was a major driver for writing the paper. Economic allocation is not suitable for the farm stage of wool production. While it is true that … the majority of existing LCAs adopt methodologies that use economic allocation … as stated by Made-By, this only serves to demonstrate that this method is not appropriate for wool. It cannot be helpful for brand or consumer information on wool products or for driving continuous improvement and does the opposite of ensuring a ‘level playing field’.
This article was first published in the June/July 2015 issue of Ecotextile News, page 56. For more information and to subscribe, click here.
