EU COST Action 628: life cycle assessment (LCA) of textile products, eco-efficiency and definition of best available technology (BAT) of textile processing

The COST Action 628 was established to produce first hand, industrial environmental data of textiles in Europe, as well as to suggest tools for comparisons of present technologies and practices with cleaner applications, including the economic effects. The Action network also suggested criteria for ISO (Type III) Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) standards. It was concluded that new emerging cleaner technologies are in a key position when striving towards zero emissions in textile processing. It is also important to identify the most polluting stages of textile processing, with the help of life cycle assessment methodology, in order to focus the development of new technologies correctly. LCA was used to set up criteria for an Environmental Product Declaration for textile products. Unique, first hand industrial data were collected from five European textile industries.