Life cycle assessment to advance the fashion industry’s sustainability: A review

Abstract

The fashion industry, a major polluter, requires urgent environmental reform throughout its supply chain. European Union is a leader on sustainability; therefore, it has to be taken in special consideration when it comes to policy analysis and actions. Understanding products impacts during their life cycles is crucial for this transformation, necessitating tools to monitor and assess impacts at all stages. Comprehensive tools, such as life cycle assessment (LCA) allow to identify critical intervention points and providing strategic decision-making support. This review article analyses the benefits and limitations of LCA in the fashion industry from the scientific literature and proposes solutions to overcome these limitations. It also examines fashion companies that communicate the adoption of LCA. The methodology plays an important role in transitioning to sustainable production and consumption models within a circular economy framework, by providing data based on a scientific and standardised method. An emerging approach is the to Organisational LCA, as it can further support companies that are not able to see the entire product life cycle in adopting a monitoring methodology at organisational level.

JEL: Q56, Q51, L67