A  Life  Cycle  Assessment  (LCA)  for  Cotton  

The  Significance  to  the  Global  Cotton  Industry  

J.  Berrye  Worsham  President  &  CEO  

Cotton  Incorporated    

Distinguished  delegates,  observers,  and  ICAC  staff  it  is  an  honor  and  pleasure  to  present  at  the  2012  plenary  meeting.    My  topic  is  “A  Life  Cycle  Assessment  for  Cotton:  The  Significance  to  the  Global  Cotton  Industry”.    My  brief  remarks  will  have  four  segments:  (1)  sustainability  directions  for  brands  and  retailers;  (2)  the  highlights  of  the  LCA;  (3)  leveraging  the  LCA  with  other  data  sources  and  (4);  where  do  we  go  from  here.  

I  want  to  stress  that  the  LCA  is  not  just  a  U.S.  analysis;  it  is  the  most  comprehensive  global  assessment  ever  completed  for  cotton  fiber.      However,  I  will  reference  some  aspects  of  sustainability  for  U.S.  cotton  to  give  you  some  idea  of  how  sustainability  information  is  being  used.    

Before  we  go  into  the  LCA,  it  is  important  for  us  to  understand  what  our  customers  (the  brands  and  retailers)  are  doing.  

Brands  on  the  leading  edge  of  sustainability  are  beginning  to  report  the  environmental  impact  of  some  of  the  major  products  that  they  produce  or  sell.    This  is  directly  from  the  website  of  Levi’s  showing  detailed  environmental  information  of  their  501  jean  –  from  energy  to  water.      The  numbers  may  not  mean  much  to  a  consumer,  but  the  information  is  being  provided  nonetheless.  

An  even  more  detailed  example  is  from  Puma,  who  has  recently  developed  the  first  environmental  profit  and  loss  statement  by  a  company.      Through  detailed  analysis,  they  have  assessed  their  overall  environmental  footprint  that  translates  into  a  monetary  estimate  from  this  impact.    In  their  report,  which  is  28  pages  long,  they  estimate  their  monetary  footprint  at  about  $200  million  U.S.  dollars  for  2010,  and  that  57%  of  the  impact  is  in  the  raw  materials  stage.  

There  are  countless  organizations  now  engaged  in  measuring  sustainability.    Important  for  our  industry  is  the  Sustainable  Apparel  Coalition,  which  has  recently  developed  a  sustainability  index  (Higg  Index)  for  a  product,  brand  or  facility  to  use.      It  is  a  composite  score  of  five  measures:    (1)  raw  materials;  (2)  manufacturing;  (3)  packaging;  (4)  end  of  life  and  (5)  product  care.      A  number  of  important  sellers  of  cotton  products  are  part  of  this  coalition.    I  will  come  back  to  this  later  in  my  presentation.  

There  is  an  organization  called  Field  to  Market,  which  is  charged  with  measuring  U.S.  agriculture’s  environmental  footprint  over  time,  with  the  ultimate  goal  of  assisting  agriculture  in  accelerating  the  improvements  going  forward.    The  members  include  agriculture,  government,  NGOs  and  industry.      These  are  but  a  few  examples.  

So  why  is  this  important  for  cotton?    In  simplistic  terms,  brands  and  retailers  are  now  using  environmental  considerations  along  with  prices  and  consumer  preferences  in  their  decision-­‐making  

process  for  product  development.      And  the  LCA  is  the  common  language  of  objective  environmental  assessments.  

So  what  is  an  LCA?    The  LCA  is  the  total  environmental  impact  from  a  representative  product  –  from  the  raw  materials  used  as  inputs,  to  manufacturing,  use  and  product  disposal.    Emissions  and  waste  products  are  also  factored  in  an  LCA.  

Our  objectives  were  to  build  the  most  credible  global  data  set  for  cotton;  develop  a  benchmark  for  cotton  to  measure  future  improvement;  identify  future  research  needs  and  assist  the  industry  in  developing  their  own  individual  LCAs  for  cotton  products.      With  or  without  us,  LCAs  will  be  done  by  industry.    We  have  to  make  sure  that  the  information  is  credible,  otherwise  it  often  hurts  cotton.  

Our  LCA  can  be  broken  down  into  three  main  functional  categories:    the  impact  at  the  farm  level,  the  impact  in  textile  manufacturing  and  lastly  in  the  consumer  use  stage  which  includes  cut/sew  and  product  disposal.  

A  little  more  detail  shows  that  we  are  looking  at  agricultural  production  in  three  key  producing  countries  (China,  U.S.  and  India),  and  we  are  looking  at  the  manufacturing  of  two  types  of  cotton  garments  (knit  shirt  and  woven  pant).      As  you  will  see,  the  manufacturing  phase  covers  four  regions  of  the  world.  

It  was  critical  to  us  that  we  had  the  best  and  most  comprehensive  data  possible.    We  had  international  LCA  experts;  Cotton  Incorporated’s  staff  of  scientists;  we  had  an  independent  review  panel  and  the  end  result  was  the  first  ISO  compliant  fiber  LCA.  

For  U.S.  production  data,  we  relied  on  public  data  collected  by  USDA;  our  own  comprehensive  surveys;  interviews  with  specialists  and  fact  checks  with  U.S.  growers  in  four  regions.  

In  India,  we  used  a  combination  of  public  data  and  interviews  with  Indian  cotton  scientists.  

In  China,  a  similar  approach  was  used.  

On  the  textile  processing  side,  we  worked  with  16  mills  providing  data  representing  four  regions  of  the  world.    We  augmented  this  information  with  additional  data  from  machinery  manufacturers.  

At  the  consumer  phase,  we  only  have  data  for  the  U.S.      It  comes  from  a  variety  of  sources  including  extensive  consumer  surveys  by  Cotton  Incorporated  and  the  Department  of  Energy.    It  is  this  level  of  detail,  complexity  and  peer  review  that  resulted  in  the  project  taking  more  than  2  years  to  complete.  

The  data  from  the  LCA  is  overwhelming  and  complex.    There  are  thousands  of  pieces  of  information.    So  for  this  presentation,  I  only  want  to  cover  a  few  key  findings  out  of  many.  

Carbon  emissions  is  certainly  a  key  global  environmental  concern  –  so  let’s  look  at  the  relative  impact  of  the  three  major  segments  to  carbon  emissions  for  a  typical  cotton  garment  –  a  batch-­‐dyed  knit  shirt.    In  this  example,  agriculture’s  relative  contribution  (green  bar)  is  minimal  compared  to  textile’s  (purple)  and  the  consumer  sector  (light  blue).    In  fact,  because  of  the  impacts  of  washing  and  drying,  the  consumer  sector  is  more  than  half  of  the  impact.  

Now  let’s  add  a  few  more:    energy,  nutrient  potential  and  water  consumed.      Agriculture’s  relative  footprint  gets  a  little  higher  in  energy  and  becomes  dominant  when  water  is  the  consideration.  

Our  LCA  actually  measures  10  different  impacts.    Some  of  these  measures  are  well  developed  such  as  energy,  and  green-­‐house  gas  potential,  and  others  have  major  theoretical  issues  such  as  toxicity.    All  the  results  are  included  in  our  report  although  we  don’t  have  time  to  discuss  details  today.  

Now  let’s  look  only  at  the  distribution  of  agricultural  production’s  impact  on  energy.    In  this  illustration,  fertilizer  production  is  the  largest  contributor  to  agriculture’s  energy  footprint  at  33%.      Ginning  is  second  at  25%  followed  by  irrigation  19%  and  field  fuel  use  at  17%.      The  important  point  here  is  that  more  efficient  nitrogen  utilization  will  be  critical  to  reduce  the  energy  footprint  of  cotton  production.  

This  is  a  more  detailed  slide  showing  carbon,  energy,  nutrient  loading  and  water.      The  big  blue  area  is  irrigation  which  is  100%  of  the  water  use.    The  orange  is  fertilizer  production  which  is  big  for  energy  and  carbon  emissions  and  the  light  yellow  is  field  emissions  which  dominates  the  impact  of  nutrient  loading.  

In  the  textile  manufacturing  process,  we  examined  batch  dyed  knits,  yarn  dyed  knits  and  continuous  dyed  wovens.    The  first  chart  shows  the  distribution  of  batch  dyed  knits.    The  large  blue  area  is  the  energy  from  spinning  which  is  about  ½  of  the  overall  energy  impact.    It  was  higher  than  expected.  

When  we  add  the  other  two  examples,  it  doesn’t  change  much  –  spinning  is  still  has  a  relatively  large  energy  footprint  in  the  textile  manufacturing  stage,  as  does  dyeing.  

I  won’t  cover  much  on  the  consumer  side  except  to  say,  that  the  results  are  very  sensitive  to  the  machinery  used,  load  size  and  the  energy  efficiency  ratings  of  the  machines.    For  example,  the  difference  between  a  baseline  wash  (warm  water,  average  loads,  &  standard  equipment)  and  a  cold-­‐  wash  was  a  reduction  of  34%  in  energy.    An  energy-­‐  star-­‐rated  machine  could  mean  as  much  as  36%  less  energy.      Larger  loads  make  a  difference  but  not  as  much  as  the  other  two.      As  a  reminder,  this  information  was  just  from  the  U.S.    It  is  probably  somewhat  representative  of  the  industrial  countries,  but  not  as  much  for  the  developing  world.      

How  is  this  being  used?    As  I  mentioned  earlier,  the  LCA  is  the  language  of  environmental  metrics.    Our  LCA  has  been  integrated  into  some  of  these  measures  on  cotton.  

For  example,  the  Sustainable  Apparel  Coalition  recently  published  their  Higg  Index  findings  for  the  raw  fiber  component.    There  are  13  different  measures  that  roll  up  into  one  score.      Don’t  worry  about  reading  the  numbers.    This  is  only  to  show  you  the  complexity.  

When  the  numbers  are  summarized,  cotton  generally  ranked  among  the  higher  fibers  –  higher  than  all  of  our  major  competitors.    In  this  measure,  higher  is  better.    I  don’t  necessarily  agree  with  a  single  score  for  any  fiber,  but  this  is  an  example  of  what  may  be  coming.      We  have  compared  cotton’s  LCA  with  information  available  for  other  major  textile  fibers.      No  fiber  is  a  clear  winner  –  all  have  relative  strengths  and  weaknesses.    For  cotton,  we  do  well  in  energy,  greenhouse  gas  emissions  but  are  weaker  on  water  use  and  the  way  toxicity  is  measured.  

The  key  going  forward  is  continuous  improvement.      Earlier  I  referenced  Field  to  Market  as  an  organization  that  is  measuring  the  changing  footprint  for  U.S.  agriculture.      This  shrinking  spider  diagram  shows  how  U.S.  cotton’s  footprint  has  contracted  since  the  early  1980s  in  terms  of  greenhouse  gas,  energy,  irrigation  water,  soil  erosion  and  land  use.    We  can  say  this  because  of  the  massive  amounts  of  information  that  has  been  collected  over  the  years  -­‐-­‐  mainly  by  USDA,  EPA  and  other  federal  agencies.    I  recognize  that  not  all  countries  can  have  this  same  degree  of  information,  but  I  urge  countries  to  begin  the  process  of  benchmarking.        It  won’t  be  long  before  you  will  be  asked  by  your  customers  to  demonstrate  progress.  

These  are  the  specific  numbers  behind  the  shrinking  graph  that  you  saw  previously.        

Cotton  Incorporated  will  be  staying  engaged  with  the  brands/retailers,  sustainability  organizations  and  other  industry  leaders  to  provide  factual  information  on  cotton,  and  correct  the  commonly  used  misstatements  about  cotton.        

Perhaps  most  important,  we  are  using  the  information  in  our  research  initiatives  going  forward.    In  agricultural  research,  we  will  continue  to  highlight  water  use  and  nitrogen-­‐use  efficiency  as  major  efforts.    In  textile  research,  it  will  be  in  reducing  water,  energy  and  the  use  of  safer  chemistry  in  cotton  processing.      And  we  have  to  continue  to  work  with  the  LCA  community  in  improving  the  methodology  for  some  of  these  important  metrics.  

In  conclusion,  improvements  in  sustainability  metrics  will  be  crucial  to  the  future  demand  for  cotton.    Cotton  Incorporated  will  continue  to  be  a  leader  in  this  area,  in  research,  application  and  communication.  

 

   

   

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What is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)? b! Environmental footprint of a product from raw material

acquisition through consumer use and disposal

Water

Energy Chemicals

Emissions Wastes

Co-products COTTON LIFE CYCLE

ASSESSMENT

Raw Material Manufacturing

Consumer Use Disposal

INPUTS OUTPUTS

Disposal

Manufacturing

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•! Build credible, well represented, and well documented environmental-data set for cotton (LCI)

•! Develop a benchmark to measure future improvement

•! Identify research needs for future improvement

•! Assist industry in developing their LCAs for cotton products

Objectives

Three Main Components of the LCA

Farm Textile Mfr. Consumer

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LCA System Boundaries and Functional Units

Data Quality and Integrity •! Data reviewed by:

•! Cotton Incorporated Staff

•! PE Americas/PE International

•! 3rd Party Expert Critical Review Panel

•! Verified with farmers and mills

•! ISO Compliant Process - ISO 14044 •! Carbon Trust Certification

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Data Collection: U.S.

•! USDA •! National Agricultural Statistics Service

•! Economic Research Service

•! Natural Resource Conservation Service

•! Cotton Incorporated’s Natural Resource Survey

•! State Extension Specialists Interviews

•! Final check using data from minimum of 2-farms per region

Data Collection: India

•! Agricultural Statistics at a Glance*

•! The Cotton Corporation of India

•! Interviews with Indian Cotton Scientists

•! Literature - includes 2005 LCA study

*publication of the Economics and Statistics, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India

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Data Collection: China

•! China Statistical Yearbook •! Shandong Cotton Research Center •! Scientific Literature •! PE-International •! Global Data Sets

Textile Production Data Collection

b! D(N;(:(,0:%/NN;1f*K/0(3<%ZZg%1A%V,*0%/,8%c$g%1A%I1H(,%I1;38%A/4;*.%K/,9A/.09;*,+%*,%"!!h^%

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Consumer Use Methodology DATA SOURCES: •! Cotton Incorporated’s Lifestyle

Monitor™ Survey

•! Department of Energy ‘Energy Star Savings Calculator’

•! 2010 DOE Energy Conservation Program for Consumer Products (75 Federal Register 182)

•! AATCC standards (2011) – Technical Manual TM150-2010 and Monograph on Standardization of Home Laundry Test Conditions.

DATA PROVIDED: •! Consumer laundering behavior

•! Consumer end-of-life behavior and garment lifetime

•! W/D load capacity

•! W/D water and energy consumption

•! Comparison of energy star and conventional W/D

W/D = washer and dryer

A Few High-Level Results

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Carbon

Agricultural Production Textile Manufacturing Cut/Sew, Use, Disposal

LCA RESULTS FOR 1,000 KG BATCH DYED KNIT SHIRT - CRADLE TO GRAVE

Contribution by Major Segment

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0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Carbon Energy Used Nutrient Potential Water Consumed

Agricultural Production Textile Manufacturing Cut/Sew, Use, Disposal

LCA RESULTS FOR 1,000 KG BATCH DYED KNIT SHIRT - CRADLE TO GRAVE

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LCA Impact Definitions Abbreviation Technical Term Example Impact

AP Acidification Potential Acid rain

EP Eutrophication Potential Nutrient loading to stream

GWP Global Warming Potential Green house gas emitted

ODP Ozone Depletion Potential Ozone hole over polar ice caps

POCP Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential Smog

PED Primary Energy Demand Electricity & fuel needed

WU Water Used (Gross Volume) Water used in washer

WC Water Consumed (Net Volume) Water evaporated in dryer

ETP Ecotoxicity Potential Animal health

HTP Human Toxicity Potential Human health

Agriculture’s Energy Footprint

X10%:'1I,%i%M.;(8*0j%A1;%%•! 5;1N%;10/@1,%k$!g%%1A%N1:*@H(%(K*::*1,:%

Fertilizer Production

33%

Irrigation 19%

Pesticide Production

2%

Post Harvest

25%

Seed Production

1%

Field Fuel Use 17%

Transport 3%

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Summary of Agricultural Impact

-20%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Carbon Energy Nutrient Water Consumed

Transport

Tractor Operations

Seeds

Post Harvest

Pesticide Production

Irrigation

Fertilizer Production

Field Emissions

Reference System

Crop Rotation

Textile Mfr. Energy Footprint (Batch-Dyed Knits)

Opening-Spinning

52%

Batch Dyeing 34%

Knitting 3%

Finishing 5%

Compaction 6%

Transport 0%

0%

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Energy Demand by Textile Process

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

100%

Batch Dyed Yarn Dyed Continuous Dyed

KNITS WOVENS

Open - Spinning Yarn Dyeing Beam / Slash / Dry Knitting Weaving Batch Dyeing Continuous Dyeing Finishing Compaction Sanforizing Transport

Sensitivity Analysis of Consumer Behavior Choices

•! Cold Wash •! Energy Star Appliance •! Extra Large Load All relative to base of: •! Warm water use •! Conventional Appliance •! Medium load

-34% -36%

-5%

Cold Wash Energy Star Wash

Extra Large Load

PRIMARY ENERGY DEMAND (Warm, Conventional, Medium Load)

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Material Name TOTAL Score

Polypropylene !"#$Polypropylene fabric !%#"Silk fabric !&#'Cotton fabric %"#(Lyocell fabric %)#!Hemp fabric %)#$Linen fabric %!#'Polyester fabric %!#!Modal fabric %$#!Jute fabric $*#"Wool fabric $*#!Rayon-viscose fabric, bamboo $(#*Nylon-6,6 fabric $(#"Rayon-viscose fabric, wood $(#&Nylon-6 fabric $"#!

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How will we use this information?

•! Communicate with industry regarding new benchmark for cotton

•! Enable industry to improve footprints through individual client LCAs

•! Identify new areas of research

•! Validate and contribute to current research

COTTON LIFE CYCLE

ASSESSMENT

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Major Research Directives •! Continue to increase water and nitrogen use

efficiencies •! Reduce energy & water in textile processing •! Improve LCI toxicity methodology:

•! Further analysis of pesticide models •! Work with the USETox community to improve pesticide

data

•! Fill data gaps in foreign cotton production: •! India •! China •! Other Countries

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