Textile Exchange

The first widely available Lifecycle Assessment study for cashmere has been released, covering nomadic grazing and farmed production systems across China and Mongolia. The study identifies primary production as the dominant impact stage and finds herd-level management and productivity as the key drivers, offering brands a baseline for targeted intervention and sourcing decisions.

A new lifecycle assessment study on polyester has been published, providing fresh impact data on virgin production in Southeast Asia and recycled production in China, Europe, and the United States. The findings pinpoint where environmental pressure is concentrated across production routes and include a social assessment of conditions affecting workers and communities.

A new industry demonstrator has set out to implement and scale the mass balance attribution chain-of-custody model for biomass-attributed PET in textile applications. The initiative, led by Fashion for Good, unites nine partners to produce biomass-attributed materials, quantify their climate impact, and develop a practical blueprint for decarbonising apparel supply chains.

Textile Exchange has introduced a structured three-step pathway for its Action Cohort, outlining reporting, verification and leadership requirements to accelerate responsible raw material production. The framework forms part of a broader membership restructure distinguishing Community and Action cohorts, with reporting voluntary in 2026 and mandatory for brands and retailers from 2027.

A coalition including Better Cotton, Cotton Incorporated, Cotton Australia, and the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol has issued new guidance on responsible life-cycle assessment use. The publication From Data to Impact: How to Get Cotton LCAs Right calls for LCAs to be applied alongside verified field data to deliver credible, transparent, and farmer-informed sustainability progress.

Textile Exchange’s latest guidance sets out principles for applying lifecycle assessment data in textiles, focusing on appropriate use cases, dataset documentation, and transparency. It outlines limits on fibre comparisons, warns against overreliance on averaged figures, and stresses the importance of collecting high-quality, representative primary data to improve the reliability of reported environmental impacts.

Textile waste traceability gets a major boost as Textile Exchange launches enhanced tracking capabilities. The development addresses supply chain transparency gaps that have long prevented brands from making accurate sustainability claims about their recycled content sourcing and circular economy progress.

Why is depolymerisation of post-consumer textile waste in Europe not scaling up? A report discusses the issue at length and suggests coordinated action by policy and industry on ten interdependent levers that should be activated together to reach a tipping point.