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Title Life cycle assessment applications to reuse, recycling and circular practices for textiles: A review
ID_Doc 6566
Authors Abagnato, S; Rigamonti, L; Grosso, M
Title Life cycle assessment applications to reuse, recycling and circular practices for textiles: A review
Year 2024
Published
DOI 10.1016/j.wasman.2024.04.016
Abstract To understand which are the best strategies for textile waste management and to analyse the effects on the environment of applying circular economy practices to textile products, a review of 45 publications where life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied to these topics has been carried out. The separate collection of textiles, followed by reuse and recycling brings relevant environmental benefits, with impacts related to reuse resulting lower than those of recycling. At the opposite, when mixed municipal solid waste is addressed to energy recovery, the textile fraction is the second most impacting on climate change, right after plastics, while for landfill disposal impacts textiles directly follow the more biodegradable fractions. Textiles manufacturing using recycled fibres generally gives lower impacts than using virgin ones, with a few exceptions in some impact categories for cotton and polyester. The circular practices with the lowest impacts are those that ensure the extension of the textiles service life. Another aim of this review is to identify the main variables affecting the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). These resulted to be the yield and material demand of recycling processes, the use phase variables, the assumptions on virgin production replaced by reuse or recycling, the substitution factor in reuse, and transportation data in business models based on sharing. Thus, in LCA modelling, great attention should be paid to these variables. Future research should address these aspects, to acquire more relevant data, based on industrial-scale processes and on people habits towards the circular economy strategies applied to textiles.
Author Keywords
Index Keywords Index Keywords
Document Type Other
Open Access Open Access
Source Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED)
EID WOS:001233290600001
WoS Category Engineering, Environmental; Environmental Sciences
Research Area Engineering; Environmental Sciences & Ecology
PDF https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2024.04.016
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