Fast fashion, technological development, and the expanding economy fueled the stunning growth of the global textile industry. Parallel to the sector's increasing consumption of energy, water, and land, it saw an alarming rise in associated environmental impacts, including contribution to global warming and toxicity on humans and ecosystems. Conducting life cycle assessments (LCAs) for identifying the hotspots in the textile value chain responsible for these impacts became critical for informed decisions toward making the sector sustainable. Such LCAs require geographically, temporally, and technologically representative life cycle inventory (LCI) data. This study aims to create a consistent national life cycle inventory for the Indian textile sector. This work covered the textile value chain from raw material production, including agriculture and fiber processing, to yarn production, fabric production, and final finishing. The data, broadly classified into agricultural and industrial data, was collected for 2014-2017 with primary data being gathered through site visits and interviews with farmers, scientists, and manufacturers. The LCI data generated for approx. 52 was critically reviewed according to eco-invent data quality guidelines and submitted to the ecoinvent database. The creation of reliable, consistent, and transparent LCIs will be helpful for a wide range of stakeholders, including researchers as well as designers, manufacturers, and consumers; in addressing many sustainability aspects of the textile life cycle by providing a basis for informed decisions in raw material selection, production technology, and purchase. We conclude that the process-level, high-accuracy inventory data for the Indian textile sector will enable India-specific LCA studies of any product and process linked to the textile sector.
Nigam et al. (Mon,) studied this question.