Taking Stock of the Share of Global Environmental Burden of Knitwear Production in Bangladesh: Constructing the Life Cycle Inventory

The textile industry significantly contributes to global environmental deterioration. Bangladesh, as a top knitwear exporter also plays a part in this degradation. Globally, there is a lack of readily available life cycle inventory (LCI) data that could be utilized to make decisions for minimizing environmental impact from this sector. Our endeavor is an attempt to address this lacuna. The study adopts a life cycle approach to evaluate the environmental impacts as well as the water footprint of the Bangladeshi textile industry with a particular focus on knitwear through rigorous field surveys and expert interviews. The assessment for both environmental impact and water footprint singled out fiber production to be responsible for most environmental externalities. The study also calculated the environmental impact of using alternative fiber such as organic cotton, recycled polyester, and recycled cotton and compared it to the existing practice of knitwear production; results of which indicate that employing alternative fiber was not only less damaging to the environment but also was economically more beneficial. Furthermore, the study analyzes three decades of revenue and emission data to project greenhouse gas (GHG) emission probability of the textile industry till 2030 for both business-as-usual scenario and alternative practices (alternative fiber composition). The projection shows that adopting alternative practices can decrease the GHG emission potential of current practices by 32%–82%. Additionally, the study provides an exhaustive LCI for knitwear production which can be used for further development of sustainable solutions and practices of the global textile industry.