Environmental sustainability of textiles and apparel: A review of evaluation methods

Environmental sustainability, which considers the tradeoff between economic productivity and environmental impact, is an important perspective in product decisions for textiles and apparel companies. Evaluating environmental sustainability for textile products has been difficult because of the complexity in the production and consumption processes. This paper provides a review of the methods that can be potentially used for measurement of environmental sustainability. These methods include the life cycle assessment, environmental footprint, eco-efficiency and Higg index. This paper reviewed the methodologies of these approaches and discussed about their limitations against the unique context of the textiles and apparel industry. We proposed a couple of directions where future research should be focused on, which may lead to ultimate solutions.