A review: life cycle assessment of cotton textiles

A significant amount of research has been published on the environmental impact assessment of cotton textiles using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. This review summarized and analysed the findings of these publications, and presented valuable insights for identifying the hotspots that have considerable potential for reducing the environmental burden of cotton textiles. The relevant papers were selected according to two criteria: life cycle assessment of cotton textiles or footprint of cotton textiles. Subsequently, key features were screened and critically analysed: functional unit, system boundary, data sources and geographic location, and impact assessment methods and impact categories. We found that there is an emerging market demand to transform conventional cotton to organic cotton. From the global perspective, a spatially explicit LCA of cotton textiles should be conducted. In addition, a comprehensive and holistic life cycle impact assessment containing more impact categories that are appropriate to cotton textiles is required. LCA is a well-justified approach among practitioners and researchers and has been widely applied to the topic of cotton textiles. This methodology should be studied and developed further to more precisely evaluate the environmental impacts of cotton textiles.