Industrial Carbon Footprint: A Case Study on Knitting Fabrics

Carbon footprint (CF) has become the latest environment terminology to be frequently used in the research fields. It is a measure of the impact of greenhouse gases (GHG) emission caused by human activities on the environment, and particularly on climate change. Textile and clothing are important necessities of daily life for human beings. China is the largest economy of industrial outputs and exports of textile and clothing. The assessment of industrial carbon footprint (ICF), which means the total amount of GHG produced in the industrial processing periods of textile and clothing, is more meaningful for the reducing of GHG emission in textile industry. This paper reports a study of the ICF of seven kinds of knitting fabrics (black polyester/cotton (40/60) fleece, pink polyester/cotton (35/65) fleece, lawn green cotton fleece, water blue cotton rib, black cotton lycra jersey, gray polyester/cotton (30/70) fleece, white cotton lycra jersey). The results show that the ICF values of lawn green cotton fleece are the highest, and the ICF values of gray polyester/cotton (30/70) fleece are the lowest. The total ICF values of the knitting fabrics are closely related to the amount of processing procedures, and the ICF values of dyeing are the highest. Dyeing, washing, bleaching, (pre-) heat setting and dry are hot-spots of ICF of the selected fabrics.