The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1520-2

ENVIRONMENTAL LCC

The Sustainability Price: expanding Environmental Life Cycle Costing

to include the costs of poverty and climate change
Murray R. Hall 1

Received: 31 October 2017 / Accepted: 7 August 2018

# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract
Purpose This study develops the Sustainability Price (SP) to include social and environmental costs in the price of goods and to
move towards a sustainable economy, as recommended by the UN Global Sustainability Panel. The SP addresses research gaps
for integrating social and environmental values as well as computational methods in Environmental Life Cycle Costing (ELCC).
A detailed case study is used to identify data sources, develop the method and consider policy applications for product labelling.
Methods An Interdisciplinary Research (IDR) methodology is used to provide a framework for methods for calculating costs to
meet minimum sustainability values. Values are based on UN sustainability goals with a focus on climate change and poverty.
Costs for climate change are based on the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) carbon price paths to avoid dangerous
climate change. Costs for poverty are based on Anker’s method, which follows the UN cost of basic needs approach which is
used by international institutions, national governments and ethical trade organisations. The costs are expressed as changes in
value added and tracked through the supply chain using the Leontief price model. The case study uses a scoping analysis to
identify important variables which are the focus of data collection and a hybrid modelling approach.
Results and discussion Existing economic and social surveys in India captured regional and production variables for the SP.
Hotspots in the production process included indirect GHG emissions for spinning and knitting processes and absolute poverty in
cotton farming regions such as Gujarat. Despite wage increases of up to 200% to address absolute poverty, the SP of a T-shirt
produced in India is only about 2% more than the existing price when retailed in the USA.
Conclusions The SP clearly communicates the costs to address poverty and climate change in global supply chains and demon-
strates the use of economic methods and data sources in ELCC. The SP identifies hotspots in the supply chain and can inform
labelling for ethical trade products. The SP is limited to minimum values for sustainability and does not consider optimisation.
Expanding the scope to other minimum values such as planetary boundaries is recommended for further research.

Keywords Environmental life cycle costing (ELCC) . Hybrid product price model . Leontief price model . Sustainability price (SP)

1 Introduction definition of sustainable development, which gives an ‘over-

This article develops a new measure called the sustainability
price (SP) to capture the concept of needs in the Brundtland
Responsible editor: Edeltraud Guenther
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1520-2) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
* Murray R. Hall
murrayrosshall@outlook.com
1
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of
Queensland, Level 2, Room 210, Steele Building, St
Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia
riding priority’ to the essential needs of the world’s poor and
considers the limits imposed on meeting these needs by the
environment, the current state of technology and social orga-
nisation (UN 1987). The Millennium Development Goals
Report estimated that the number of people in extreme pover-
ty, defined as living on less than $1.25 per day, had halved
from 1990 to 2015 (UN 2015a). However, despite this prog-
ress, approximately 800 million people remain in extreme
poverty in 2015 (UN 2015a). Poverty has historically been a
focus of sustainability (UN 1987) and remains a central con-
cern of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG) (UN 2015b; UN 2016). Climate change has also
emerged as a global environmental constraint, potentially de-
fining a new geological era, and with impacts over the coming

decades that are now a matter of severity (IPCC 2014b). The
economy has been recognised as both the driver and the po-
tential solution to sustainability challenges. To move towards
a sustainable economy, the UN Secretary General’s High-level
Panel on Global Sustainability (GSP) recommended including
environmental and social costs in the price of goods.
The SP meets the research need of including social and
environmental costs by building upon recent initiatives in
Environmental Life Cycle Costing (ELCC). By addressing
this goal, the paper also addresses current debates and
research gaps for ELCC and sustainability. For example,
from a methodological perspective, Hall (2015) outlined a
transdisciplinary framework for including sustainability
values in ELCC. From a method perspective, Heijungs et al.
(2013) outlined the expansion of ELCC to consider social and
environmental costs. Particular methods for incorporating
social and environmental costs have also recently been
developed. For example, van der Velden and Vogtlander
(2017) have expanded the long-standing eco-value method
to include socio-economic costs. In addition, Neugebauer et
al. (2017) have also proposed living wages as a midpoint
indicator in LCA. Both approaches referred to Anker’s meth-
od (Anker 2006a) which has also been further developed
(Anker and Anker 2017) and adopted by numerous ethical
trade organisations (ISEAL 2013). From a computational per-
spective, Nakamura and Rebitzer (2008) noted the potential to
include social and environmental costs in ELCC as changes in
value added in a Leontief price model. The Leontief price
model has also been used for estimating missing data for
process-based models (Stromman et al. 2009; Stromman and
Solli 2008). The role of value added in computational methods
for ELCC has also been noted by Moreau and Weidema
(2015). However, development and demonstration of the
methodological framework and computational methods for
ELCC using detailed case studies remain a research gap, both
in terms of incorporating social and environmental costs, as
well as more broadly in ELCC (Swarr et al. 2011). In summa-
ry, this paper addresses these research gaps through the fol-
lowing questions:
i. How can existing methods for quantifying poverty and
climate change be used in ELCC?
ii. How can existing models and literature be used to focus
data collection for important variables in the supply chain
of a product?
iii. How can the data be modelled at the product scale to
communicate to the consumer the unaccounted costs of
poverty and climate change?
A case study of a T-shirt produced in India for sale in the
USA is selected to capture global sustainability challenges and
to develop, demonstrate and compare the methodology to al-
ternative approaches. The product of a T-shirt is selected
Int J Life Cycle Assess
because it is a ubiquitous product that is easily recognised
by consumers, has been used to communicate Social LCA
(UNEP 2009) and has been the subject of numerous LCA
studies (Roos and Peters 2015; Steinberger et al. 2009;
Wang et al. 2015; Zhang et al. 2015). The production location
of India is chosen because of the importance of India for both
the prevalence of poverty and the production volumes of T-
shirts in the global market. It is estimated that one in six people
in the world are Indian, about 300 million Indians live below
the official poverty line (26% of the national population) and
the size of a single Indian state is a similar scale to a European
country (Guha 2017). The Indian textile industry also has
global significance and contributes over 20% of India’s export
earnings (Kar 2015). The growth in exports to the USA and
EU has been attributed to low cost and flexible labour condi-
tions which has reduced union representation, strikes as well
as the bargaining position of labour relative to capital
(Abraham and Sasikumar 2010). Cotton T-shirts, singlets
and vests are the largest type of ready-made garment (RMG)
produced in India (FWF 2016). In 2011, the exports of T-
shirts, singlets and vests were $2024 million dollars with a
weight of 67.6 kilo tonnes (UN 2017). The USA imported
approximately 27% of Indian T-shirts and was the single larg-
est importer while the European countries of Germany, UK,
France, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Denmark
imported approximately 39% of Indian T-shirts (UN
2017)—collectively referred to as Western countries in this
paper.
2 Methodology
The methodology provides the framework for defining values
and the use of methods (particular tools) for calculating the SP.
The methodology is also important for defining the relation-
ship between the disciplines and the role each plays in calcu-
lating the SP. The steps in the methodology are summarised in
Fig. 1 and starts by defining the terms in the SP. Methods to
calculate the cost to meet minimum sustainability values are
then defined as well as the use of the price model to track their
flow through the economy. The methods are further developed
and demonstrated using an ELCC case study which includes a
scoping analysis to identify important variables and data
sources and then models the SP for a product.
2.1 The Sustainability Price
The SP is defined as the sum of the existing market price,
plus the additional price to meet minimum social and en-
vironmental sustainability values, Eq. (1). The SP is sim-
ilar to the three-pillar approach to sustainability in LCSA
and ELCC (Heijungs et al. 2013; Kloepffer 2008). The
term sustainability price gap is the difference between
Int J Life Cycle Assess
Fig. 1 Summary of steps in the Sustainability Price methodology
the SP and the existing market price, Eq. (2). Superscripts
are used to describe the variable and subscripts are re-
served for matrix dimensions.
psustainability ¼ pmarket þ Δpsocial þ Δpenvironmental
psustainability−gap ¼ psustainability −pmarket
¼ Δp social
þ Δp environmental
where
psustainability the sustainability price
pmarket the market price
Δpsocial the change in price to meet minimum social
sustainability values
Δpenvironmental the change in price to meet minimum
environmental sustainability values
psustainability the price gap between the sustainability price
gap
and the market price
As noted in the introduction, the paper draws upon the
Brundtland definition of sustainability (UN 1987). The social
and environmental constraints are defined as minimum sus-
tainability values following (Hall 2015) and considered fur-
ther below.
2.2 Interdisciplinary methodology
The methodology is interdisciplinary (NA 2005, p. 2), and the
relationship of the disciplines is based upon Max-Neef (2005)
and summarised in Fig. 2. The methodology assigns econom-
ics as a pragmatic discipline that answers the question of
‘What are we capable of doing?’ in terms of market costs to
meet policy and minimum sustainability values. Examples of
the costs are ‘cost of basic needs’ to define absolute poverty
and abatement costs for pollution to avoid dangerous climate
change, with terms defined below. Economics is not used to
define ethics or values or to describe what exists, as suggested
by Max-Neef (2005). The hierarchy of disciplines in Fig. 2
ð1Þ avoids the potential conflict of values from economics with
values for sustainability (Hall 2015).
ð2Þ
2.3 Social and environmental costs to meet minimum
sustainability values
The SP methodology requires well-established ethical argu-
ments and considers the cost to meet minimum values using
established scientific literature as well as UN and national
statistics. Minimum sustainability values are considered in
detail for absolute poverty and dangerous climate change.
Poverty and climate change are central to the Brundtland def-
inition of sustainable development (UN 1987) and UN SDG
goals (UN 2015b; UN 2016) and also provide an example of
an ecological and social constraint. The methodological re-
quirements for calculating social and environmental costs fol-
low the fairness, comprehensiveness and transparency criteria
for the integration of social and environmental costs in ELCC
(Nakamura and Rebitzer 2008) as well as the requirements for
applying planetary boundaries in global supply chains (Clift et
al. 2017).
Poverty is defined by the World Bank as a ‘pronounced
deprivation in well-being’ (World Bank 2009, p. 2). As the
World Bank notes, this leads to questions of what is meant by
well-being and how to define the reference point against which
to measure deprivation. Absolute poverty is the most common
measure in national statistics and favoured where hunger and
the inability to meet basic needs are more pronounced (UN
2005). The UN Handbook on Poverty Statistics does not
 Int J Life Cycle Assess

Fig. 2 Hierarchy of disciplines in

the methodology and the
questions they address, adapted
from Max-Neef (2005)

directly define absolute poverty but instead discusses the con-

cept in terms of basic needs (food and non-food needs) and the  
possibility of using income as a measure (UN 2005). A basic cbasic needs family
location ¼ cfood family
location þ chousing
location
family
þ cessential
location
needs
ð3Þ
definition of absolute poverty is common among many sources
(Anker 2006b) including Rowntree’s pioneering work on pov- *cmargin
location
for unforssen events

erty (Rowntree 1908) as well as definitions adopted in the

World Bank’s World Development Report (World Bank lwgross basic needs family
location ¼ clocation  FTEfamily
location
1990). Based on the review of definitions (Anker 2006b), ab-
solute poverty is defined in this paper as the ‘income necessary þ cstatutory
location
payroll deductions and tax
ð4Þ
to be able to afford a low-cost nutritious diet and non-food
necessities at levels considered acceptable for the country’
lwgap gross existing gross
location ¼ lwlocation −wskill;gender; location ð5Þ
(Anker 2006b, p. 282). Anker’s method (Anker and Anker
2017) is used for quantifying absolute poverty in terms of a where
living wage, summarised in Fig. 3 and with additional detail
for calculations provided in Eqs. (3–5). A living wage is defined cbasic needs family
location the cost of basic needs for a
as the ‘hourly wage rate required to support a household at the family by location
poverty line’ (Anker 2006a, p. 312). cfood family
location the cost of food for a basic but
Anker’s method uses a ‘cost of basic needs’ approach nutritious diet for a family by
for defining absolute poverty, which is also used by the location
UN, World Bank and most national statistical organisa- chousing
location
family
the cost of housing to meet a
tions (UN 2005, p. 33; World Bank 2015). The ‘cost of basic health standard for a
basic needs’ for a family includes the cost of food, hous- family by location
ing, essential needs and a small margin for unforeseen cessential
location
needs
the cost of other essential needs
events for a family in a given location, Eq. (3). Anker’s for a family by location
method (Anker and Anker 2017) provides detail for the cmargin
location
for unforssen events
a cost margin for unforeseen
calculation of each term. The gross living wage is based events for a family by location
on the cost of basic needs for a family divided by the full- lwgross
location the gross living wage by
time equivalent workers per family in a given location, location
plus the cost from statutory payroll deductions and tax, FTE family
location full-time equivalent workers
Eq. (4). The living wage gap is the difference between the per family by location
gross living wage and the existing gross wage by skill, cstatutory
location
payroll deductions and tax
statutory payroll deductions
gender and location, Eq. (5). Wages can vary by skill and tax by location
level, as captured by a Mincerian Earnings Function lwgap
location the living wage gap by location
(Soderbom et al. 2015) as well as by gender and location wexisting gross
skill;gender; location the existing gross wage by
(Anker and Anker 2017, Fig. 3). skill, gender and location
Int J Life Cycle Assess
Fig. 3 Anker’s method for estimating the living wage, adapted from Anker and Anker (2017)
Climate change is perhaps the best known and studied
planetary boundary and is also one of the three boundaries
estimated to already have been breached (the other two being
biodiversity loss and biogeochemical flows) (Steffen et al.
2015). Climate change is also used to demonstrate the princi-
ples of the impact indicator approach in LCA Standards (ISO
2006). In comparison, this paper adopts the IPCC focus on
well-being (IPCC 2014a, p5) and risk (IPCC 2014b, p126) to
set a minimum target to avoid ‘dangerous’ climate change.
The UNFCC Article 2 defined ‘dangerous’ climate change
as the level which does not allow ecosystems to adapt natu-
rally to climate change, threatens food production and does
not allow economic development to proceed in a sustainable
manner (UN 1992). Carbon price paths to avoid ‘dangerous’
climate change are then used to monetise greenhouse gas
emissions. The price paths are from the IPCC Working
Group III’s AR5 Scenario Database which contains 31 models
and 1184 scenarios (IPCC 2014a, Annexe II.10).
2.4 The price model
The Leontief price model (Dietzenbacher 1997; Leontief
1986) is used for calculating changes in price as a function
of value added (wages, profit and taxes), Eq. (6). The cost to
meet minimum sustainability values is modelled as a change
in value added. The Leontief price model has a number of
assumptions such as fixed technical coefficients and no sub-
stitution or elasticity (Miller and Blair 2009). These assump-
tions are compatible with the goal of the SP to calculate the
cost to meet sustainability conditions in existing production if
all other aspects of the economy remain constant.
0
Δp ¼ L Δv ð6Þ
where
Δp the change in price from a change in value added
L′ the transpose of the Leontief inverse
Δv the change in value added
2.5 Case study environmental LCC of a T-shirt
A detailed case study is used to explore the development of
the methodology. A case study is defined as ‘an empirical
inquiry that investigates contemporary phenomena in depth
and within its real-life context’ (Yin 2009, p. 18). The inquiry
includes considering variables, multiple sources and prior
theory to guide data collection and analysis (Yin 2009).
The case study also follows the technical requirements
and guidelines of the ELCC Code of Practice (Swarr et
al. 2011) and LCA standards (ISO 2006), and the goal,
scope, functional unit and detailed modelling methods are
described below. The cost to meet minimum social and
environmental sustainability values creates a single unit
of measure which eliminates the need for characterisation
and weighting steps (Swarr et al. 2011).
2.5.1 Goal, scope and functional unit
The goal of the case study is to develop a method to commu-
nicate to the consumer the additional cost to meet minimum
environmental and social sustainability values. The scope of
the SP is restricted to production processes up to the point of
sale. The case study also restricts the scope of sustainability
challenges to poverty and climate change to provide an exam-
ple of a social and environmental cost. The SP for the Indian
T-shirt is defined using the market price and the change in
price for living wages and greenhouse gas emissions, Eq.
(7). The sustainability price gap for the t-shirt is defined as
the difference between the sustainability price and the current
market price (Eq. (8)).
pT−shirt sustainability ¼ pmarket þ Δplw þ Δpghg ð7Þ
pT−shirt sustainability gap ¼ pT−shirt sustainability −pmarket Δplw þ Δpghg
ð8Þ
where
T − shirt
p the sustainability price for the case study of a
sustainability
T-shirt
Δplw the change in price for living wages
Δpghg the change in price for greenhouse gas
emissions
pT − shirt the price gap between the sustainability and
sustainability gap
market price for a T-shirt
The functional unit is a cotton T-shirt which is retailed for
$20 USD (US dollars with a base year of 2011) and weighs
0.235 kg. The retail price is based on an existing case study
(Rieple and Singh 2010) but in practice can have a large range.
For example, a standard Hanes brand T-shirt retailed for about
$12 USD in 2017 and about $5–6 when on sale or as part of a

multi-pack purchase (Hanes, www.hanes.com, Accessed 26
July 2017). In comparison, a Patagonia brand T-shirt with
organic cotton grown in the USA and fair-trade labour for
cut and sewing in Mexico retailed for $35 USD in 2017
(Patagonia, www.patagonia.com, Accessed 26 July 2017).
2.6 Scoping analysis
An iterative modelling method based on LCA standards (ISO
2006, 2012) is used to identify important processes and to
focus the data collection to refine the spatial and production
process resolution for the case study. The modelling method
begins with a global multi-regional input-output model
(MRIO) to take advantage of its existing labour and environ-
mental accounts. Data is then collected to capture important
variables, and a hybrid product price model is used to refine
the product and spatial resolution for calculating the SP.
The 2013 release of the World Input-Output Database
(WIOD) is selected because it provides detailed data for value
added as well as environmental and socio-economic accounts
(SEA) to monetise the costs to provide living wages and ad-
dress dangerous climate change. The MRIO results are
analysed to identify the importance of costs to provide living
wages and abate GHG to the existing market price, Eqs. (9)
and (10).
*
Δplw
Δp%lw m
¼ 100 ð9Þ
pmarket
* Emission factors are based on reported emission factors for
%ghg m Δpghg
Δp ¼ market 100 ð10Þ
p
where
Δp%lw _ percentage change from the change in price from
m
living wages to the market price
Δp%ghg _ percentage change from the change in price from
m
GHG emissions to the market price
The MRIO represents the national production of textiles in
India as basic prices for domestic production. The relative
importance of particular supply chain paths in the Indian tex-
tile sector is analysed using structural Path Analysis (PA)
(Defourny and Thorbecke 1984; Lenzen 2003; Treloar
1997). The PA also provides insight into the effect of aggre-
gation of regions and industries in the MRIO including limi-
tations of the industry-industry format of the WIOD model
(Rueda-Cantuche 2011). These limitations are explored using
literature for the technological and spatial variables for the
production of a T-Shirt in India following LCA data quality
requirements (ISO 2012).
Int J Life Cycle Assess
2.7 Data collection
Economic and social surveys in India provide data for ELCC
which documents monetary flows in a similar manner as a
physical life cycle inventory of production. The data is report-
ed by region in India as well as by a detailed industry classi-
fication. This enables production characteristics by region to
be considered as well as production processes within the ag-
ricultural and textile industry—such cotton growing, spin-
ning, weaving, dying and cut and sewing of garments. In
particular, detailed Indian agricultural data is based upon the
Crop Cultivation and Production Surveys (CCPS) for cotton
production (GoI 2008; GoI 2017a) with additional detail for
the gender of workers provided by Agricultural Wages India
(GoI 2014b). Textile processes are based on the Annual
Survey of Industries (ASI) (GoI 2016a). Additional data for
rotor spinning of yarn for jersey fabric for a T-shirt is based on
cost factors for Indian textiles from the International
Federation for Textile Manufacture (IFTM) (ITMF 2012). A
World Bank study (Feeney et al. 2009) is used to provide
supply chain steps from the Indian factory to the US retailer.
This included calculation of the Free On Board (FOB) price,
which is the value of goods at basic prices, plus the cost for
transport and loading to the port and any taxes less subsidies
on the exported goods (Eurostat 2008); the Cost Insurance
Freight (CIF) price, which is the import price before import
duties or taxes or transport margins within the country
(Eurostat 2008); the Fully Landed Price (FLP) is the CIF price
plus import duties and taxes (Feeney et al. 2009).
the Indian energy sector as well as literature sources for par-
ticular industrial processes. Remaining data is sourced from
existing models such as WIOD. For example, WIOD GHG
emission intensity is calculated from the transpose of the
Leontief inverse and the GHG emissions per dollar of output
from each industry (a column vector), Eq. (11).
0
eghg ¼ L d ghg ð11Þ
where
ghg
e GHG emission intensity per dollar output by industry
sector
dghg GHG emissions directly released by each industry per
dollar output
The living wage gap is calculated from Government of India
surveys of household characteristics and demographics (GoI
2012; GoI 2013; GoI 2014c) as well as food price surveys
(GoI 2014a; GoI 2017b) and housing costs based on an
Indian application of Anker’s method (Mamkoottam and
Kaicker 2016). All calculations for the living wage gap for
cotton production are performed at a regional level. A weighted
average is then calculated based on the contribution of each
Int J Life Cycle Assess
region to national cotton production (GoI 2016c). The
Electronic Supplementary Material provides detailed summa-
ries of the assembled data for the supply chain and value added.
2.8 Hybrid product price model
A simple product price model is developed to capture the
main price paths and variables and to extend the supply
chain path to export from India and retail in the USA.
Cotton production is disaggregated to the regions of pro-
duction in India. The textile industry is disaggregated by
the main process stages for the production of a T-shirt. A
foreground model is used to capture the main paths and
spatial and technological variables and their change in
value added. Existing background models are used to
estimate the change in value added or the remaining pro-
duction tiers in the path. The path in the background
model is summarised as a change in value added and
entered directly into the value added of the foreground
model. For example, emission intensities from LCA as
well as IO are used to summarise the change in value
added for paths in the background model. The SP gap is
calculated by summing the two components of the price
change, Eq. (12).
 0  0
pTshirt sustainability gap ¼ Lm;m
f
Δvmf þ Lm;m
f
Δvbm ð12Þ
where
 
f
Lm;m transpose of the Leontief inverse for the foreground
0
model
Δvm f
change in value added for the foreground model
Δvbm change in value added for the background model
The Electronic Supplementary Material provides detail of
the development of the matrices as well as Matlab code for the
product price model.
3 Results
The results are structured in three parts and correspond to
steps 6, 7 and 8 in Fig. 1.
3.1 Scoping analysis
The analysis of the MRIO provided insight into changes in
basic prices to provide living wages and abate greenhouse gas
emissions for the Indian textile sector. The MRIO results guid-
ed the data collection for the case study.
3.1.1 Contribution of living wage and GHG costs to the SP
of Indian textiles using WIOD
The SP is 13.7% higher than the basic price of Indian textiles
in WIOD. Living wages accounted for 10.8% of the price
change while GHG emission accounted for only 2.9%. This
suggested a focus on data collection for living wages to refine
the SP for a T-shirt product. This result is not sensitive to the
assumed carbon price. For example, the IPCC carbon price for
the 430–480-ppm CO2 target scenario had an uncertainty
range of $40 and $71 USD2011/tCO2e for the 25th and 75th
percentile. Assuming the upper range carbon price would not
change the relative importance of living wages and carbon
prices to the SP.
3.1.2 Structural path analysis
The results for the PA are discussed in terms of price changes
for a nominal $1 output from the Indian textile industry. The
overall change in price for the $1 output is 13.7c. A relatively
small number of supply chain paths accounted for most of the
price increase for the SP. For example, the top 23 paths
accounted for 11c of a 13.7c change in price. The top path is
the living wage costs from agricultural to textiles which
accounted for 5.08c of the change in the SP. In contrast, the
top GHG path is from electricity to textiles and accounted for
only 0.47c of the change in the SP. The PA also showed that
living wages for agriculture had a larger effect on the SP than
living wages within the textile industry. The PA also showed
that GHG from electricity use in the textile sector had a larger
effect than emissions directly emitted within the textile indus-
try. In general, the textile production chain is intensive for
living wage costs but not for greenhouse gas emission costs.
That is, the top paths for living wage contributions are large
and then became small very quickly. In contrast, the contribu-
tion to the price change from GHG is made up from many
small paths.
However, the use of MRIO industry sectors led a number
of limitations in the results. The aggregation of industry into
broad categories led to a number of paths that are self-
referencing. For example, the textile sector may spin cotton
as an output to weaving which is an output to making gar-
ments. However, the industry category for textiles captures
these inputs and outputs as flows to and from itself.
Capturing the self-referencing effect of industries increased
the price change from the top 23 paths from 11c to 13c which
is only 0.7c less than the total price change of 13.7c, or a cutoff
error of 5%. Aggregation errors may also affect the estimate of
the change in value added which is transmitted down the sup-
ply chain path. For example, the emission intensity of electric-
ity may not be representative of its industry sector of ‘electric-
ity gas and water’. Similarly, the emission intensity of

nitrogen-based fertilisers used for cotton production may not
be representative of the broader chemical industry in WIOD.
3.2 Product and spatial resolution
Recent wage surveys of agricultural workers in India show a
large variation in wage rates between each state as well as by
skill level and gender (GoI 2014b). Cotton production in India
is also concentrated in particular states (GoI 2016b) which
suggests the need to consider regional contributions in
order to calculate a representative Indian average. Regional
differentiation can be seen in the production requirements in
the detailed CCPS (GoI 2008; GoI 2017a). The Indian cotton
industry has also undergone large changes in technology, in
particular the use of genetically modified cotton, which now
accounts for most of the cotton produced in India (GoI
2016b). The labour and production surveys are conducted
regularly and capture this shift. LCA studies also highlight
technological considerations that affect greenhouse gas emis-
sions including the use of nitrogen-based fertilisers (CI 2012),
the technology to produce particular types of yarn (van der
Velden et al. 2014) such as used in a T-shirt and heat and
chemicals for dyeing fabric (Terinte et al. 2014). Finally, the
cut and sewing of a T-shirt can also have different labour
requirements compared to other types of garments (Miller
2009; Miller and Williams 2009) which was addressed by
using a World Bank report for the production of T-shirt in
India (Feeney et al. 2009) for retail in the USA.
3.3 Hybrid product price model for an Indian T-shirt
retailed in the USA
3.3.1 The living wage gap
Figure 4 shows the living wage gap as a percentage difference
between the living wage and the prevailing wage rate.
Particular regions such as Orissa had a high living wage gap
for all types of cotton workers—ranging from 144% for male
family labour to 226% for attached female labour. The highest
living wage gap in all regions is for female workers—either as
attached or as casual labour. The living wage gap for family
labour is also lower than attached and casual labour for both
genders. The contribution to national cotton production is
shown on the secondary axis of Fig. 4. The living wage gap
in Gujarat is particularly important because Gujarat not only
has a higher living wage gap than most other regions in India
but also produces almost a third of the cotton in India, more
cotton than any other state. This means that the living wage
gap in Gujarat, which ranges between 116% for male casual
labour and 207% for female casual labour, has a large contri-
bution to the national weighted average for cotton production.
The living wage gap for other T-shirt production stages is
generally much lower than the living wage gap in agriculture.
Int J Life Cycle Assess
The living wage gap for workers in spinning, knitting and
dyeing is about 11% compared to 27% for the more labour-
intensive process of C&S to make the T-shirt. There is no
living wage gap for supervisors and other employees in these
processes.
3.3.2 Greenhouse gas emissions
The more specific data for agricultural and textile processes as
well as GHG emission factors led to an increase in the GHG
intensity compared to textile outputs in the MRIO model. The
GHG cost increased by 25% per dollar output for Indian cot-
ton production in the product price model compared to
‘Agriculture, Hunting, Forestry and Fishing’ in WIOD. The
GHG cost increased by 67% for the output a T-shirt in the
product model compared to ‘Textile and Textile Products’ in
WIOD. The contribution of GHG costs for each textile pro-
cess as well as the increased contribution to the SP is
discussed in the following section.
3.3.3 Sustainability price
The SP is $20.44 and for a T-shirt that currently retails for $20.
The SP gap is only 44 cents or a 2.2% increase in the existing
price to meet the costs of poverty and climate change in the
production chain. Figure 5 shows the growth in price over the
supply chain for the existing price and the SP. The percentage
change between the current and SP is also shown using the
secondary axis and had a contrary trend over the supply chain.
For example, the percentage change at the beginning of the
supply chain is about 15% for cotton production. As the price
increases over the supply chain, the percentage change for the
SP falls to about 2% of the retail price. Although the SP in-
crease for the T shirt is a relatively small percentage increase
for a US consumer, it accommodates large increases in wages
for agricultural workers to address poverty in the production
of cotton in India.
Figure 6 breaks down the percentage increase of the SP
over the supply chain shown in Fig. 5 to the contribution from
living wage and GHG costs. Living wages had a greater con-
tribution for agriculture while GHG had a greater contribution
for other processes. Indirect GHG emissions, the emissions
from inputs to a process, had a greater contribution than direct
GHG emissions, the emission released from the process itself.
In agriculture, the indirect GHG emissions for fertilisers are
greater than the direct emissions from the use of fuels such as
diesel. The use of electricity in spinning, knitting and C&S
operations and chemicals in the dyeing process also meant that
indirect emissions are much greater for these operations as
well. The costs for GHG had a greater contribution than living
wages to the sustainability price gap for the retail of the T-
shirt. The sustainability price gap of 2.2% is based on a 0.75%
and 1.47% increase from living wages and GHG emissions
Int J Life Cycle Assess
Fig. 4 Living wage gap by T-shirt
production stage
respectively. The relative contribution to the SP from GHG is
greater than in the scoping analysis using the MRIO and high-
lights the importance of collecting data for technological
variables.
4 Discussion
The discussion considers the limitations of the minimum
values for sustainability as well as the case study scope and
data limitations. The advantages of the methodology and the
implications of the results for other products and policy for
product labelling are also discussed.
The SP methodology defines minimum sustainability
values and recognises the need to constrain the economy, such
as identified in formative works in ecological economics for a
steady-state economy (Daly 1968; Daly 1974) and more re-
cently as ‘doughnut economics’ (Raworth 2017), which adds
social constraints to the concept of planetary boundaries
(Dearing et al. 2014). However, the SP methodology has a
number of limitations for considering a broader role of eco-
nomics and values for sustainability. In particular, the mini-
mum sustainability values do not consider the full scope
of values and do not provide a basis for optimisation. For
example, much more abatement may be justified by moving
beyond the target to avoid dangerous climate change (Aldy et
al. 2016). In addition, the SP is an indicator and not an actual
market price. For example, IPCC carbon costs are based on
‘idealised implementation’ (IPCC 2014a) and existing ex-
perience with carbon markets suggests that system design
can have a large influence on the actual carbon price
achieved (Betz and Sato 2006). The T-shirt case study is
also limited in the types of minimum sustainability values
for poverty and climate change. As suggested by doughnut
economics, there is the potential to expand the scope to
consider other planetary boundaries (Steffen et al. 2015)
and Sandin et al. (2015) provide insight for this application
to the textile industry. The life cycle stages in the case
study can also be extended to consider market as well as
costs to meet minimum sustainability values in the use and
end of life stages of the product.
An advantage of the SP methodology is the availability of
existing economic models and economic and social survey data
which are regularly updated and can capture important variables
for minimum sustainability values. For example, the living wage
gap is quantified by state in India as well as by industry, skill
level and gender which enables analysis similar to the ‘hotspot’
analysis of poverty in social life cycle assessment (Benoit-Norris
et al. 2012). The detailed agricultural production cost data also
provides representative data based on regular national surveys. In

Fig. 5 Sustainability price for a T-
shirt produced in India and
retailed in the USA
comparison, LCA studies of cotton and fabric production in India
have drawn upon models and case studies in specific regions to
approximate cotton production in India. For example, Indian
cotton production in the LCA database of Ecoinvent (CI 2012)
was based on an agrarian model which aimed to capture the
complexity of spatial and temporal variability for the large
number of farms. Steinberger et al. (2009) considered the energy
requirements for cotton production in India based upon case
studies in Punjab and the Thar Desert, the latter falling mostly
in Rajasthan (Singh et al. 2003; Singh et al. 2000). Steinberger et
al. (2009) did not consider other important cotton-growing re-
gions in India such as the rest of Gujarat (outside of the Thar
Desert) and Maharashtra, and the source data predated the tech-
nological shift in India to genetically modified cotton (GoI
2016b). However, detailed production data based on costs may
also introduce limitations. For example, cost-based cutoff criteria
may exclude important material and energy flows. An example is
the zero cost for water which is reported in the detailed farm
production cost data despite the importance of water for the
sustainability of Indian cotton production (Chapagain et al.
2005). Similarly, waste is reported as a cost of wasted input
materials (ITMF 2012), and resource and waste management
concerns are not captured. This limitation can be addressed in
the SP methodology by drawing upon more detailed environ-
mental accounts from LCA and IO.
Int J Life Cycle Assess
The case study results provide insight into the SP of other
products as well as policy applications. For example, a change
in the type of garment from a T-shirt to jeans would not change
the main findings. This is because the living wage gap for
producing cotton in India is large and applies to the cotton
inputs for both T-shirt and jeans. In general, the Indian agri-
cultural sector has a large living wage gap which applies to all
outputs from the sector. The cost to abate greenhouse gas
emissions may be more variable for different garments de-
pending on the type of yarn (van der Velden et al. 2014) and
particular types of dyeing and the associated heat and
chemicals required (Terinte et al. 2014). However, the SP
gap would be a similar percentage of the existing product price
for both T-shirts and jeans produced in India for retail in the
USA because of the relative size of the retail markup com-
pared to the cost of production (Miller 2009; Miller and
Williams 2009).
The SP methodology, and the T-shirt case study results in
particular, can be applied to the labelling of ethical trade prod-
ucts. The SP provides a guide to the cost to meet ethical trade
standards. For example, the SP gap is 44c for a T-shirt pro-
duced in India and retailed for $20 in the USA. If the same T-
shirt is retailed for $35 based on claims of meeting ethical
trade standards, the SP enables the consumer to question
who receives the additional $14.56? Currently, the Fairtrade
Int J Life Cycle Assess
Fig. 6 Living wages and GHG
contribution to sustainability price
gap over the supply chain
Labelling Organisation (FLO), which is the largest ethical trade
labelling initiative (Warrier 2014), does not set or recommend
the additional retail price for meeting their ethical trade stan-
dards. That is, once the ethical trade standards are met, the
retailer can label the product and set the price based on the
market willingness-to-pay. In comparison, the FLO does
define payments to the producer using Fairtrade Minimum
Prices (FMP) and Fairtrade Premiums (FP) for the FOB and
Ex-works (EXW) price (delivered to the buyer but not cleared
for export) stages (FLO 2016c). The FMP is a floor price to
guard against fluctuations in global price (FLO 2016c). The FP
is an additional payment applied to the FOB or EXW price to
account for the cost of meeting the requirements of the ethical
trade standard. The FMP is based on the Cost Of Sustainable
Production (COSP) which is a template for considering supply
chain costs (FLO 2011) and is similar to an ELCC inventory of
existing market costs. The SP methodology is particularly rel-
evant for ethical trade standards for calculating the COSP. For
example, the FLO has recently introduced living wage require-
ments (FLO 2014; FLO 2015) (also based on Anker’s method)
and developed new ethical trade standards for textiles (FLO
2016b; FLO 2017). However, the FP has yet to be recalculated
to include costs for the new living wage standards, and the
current FP for cotton seed is 5% of the EXW price (FLO
2016a). The case study for Indian cotton production suggests
that the premium will need to increase to about 12% to cover
living wages in India. There is also the potential to expand the
application of the SP beyond textile production in India to the
numerous products and production locations covered by ethical
trade organisations (Auld 2014).
5 Conclusions
The SP provides a single measure that communicates to the
consumer the sustainability challenges of climate change
and poverty. The SP addresses the UN GSP recommenda-
tion for including social and environmental costs to move
towards a sustainable economy. It also addresses research
gaps for operationalising a three-pillar model of sustain-
ability by developing a methodological framework and
computational methods for including social and environ-
mental costs in ELCC. The potential conflict in values
between sustainability and economics was addressed by
defining the role of economics as calculating the costs to
meet minimum sustainability values. Absolute poverty was
calculated using a cost of basic needs approach which is
applied by national governments, international institutions
and ethical trade organisations. Carbon emissions were
monetised using IPCC carbon price paths, which drew up-
on IPCC abatement costs and risk frameworks to avoid
dangerous climate change (research question i).

The computational method drew upon the price model from
input-output analysis and data from national economic and social
surveys. The advantage of this approach was that the price model
in IO is well established and addresses recent debates about
computations in ELCC. The use of existing MRIO models also
enabled scoping analysis to identifying important variables for
data collection. National economic and social survey data was
particularly valuable in a large country such as India, where each
state is as large as a European country and LCA data may not be
sufficiently detailed to capture spatial, technical and temporal
variables (research question ii).
The SP methodology was demonstrated for a case study of a
T-shirt produced in India for retail in the USA. A hybrid product
price model was used to include detailed process-level data in a
foreground model and data for remaining supply chain produc-
tion tiers in a background model. The SP results for the T-shirt
provided a single measure that clearly communicates the twin
challenges of climate change and poverty to a consumer (re-
search question iii). The results suggested that addressing abso-
lute poverty and dangerous climate change for the production of
a T-shirt in India would only add about 2% or 44c to the retail
price in a country such as the USA. The results also captured
technological and spatial ‘hotspots’. Indirect greenhouse emis-
sions from inputs such as fertilisers and electricity had a larger
effect on the SP than fuels used directly in each process. The
living wage gap was greatest in the production of cotton rather
than in the cut and sewing operations for making the T-shirt. The
living wage gap was also large in particular states such as Gujarat
which produces about one third of the cotton in India. The im-
portance of agriculture for living wages in India and the relatively
small SP gap for the retail price in Western countries were typical
of textile products exported from India to the West. The SP has
the potential to be applied to policy such as the labelling of ethical
trade products by quantifying the payments required for living
wages for producers and informing the consumer of the SP gap.
The SP has limitations due to its focus on minimum sus-
tainability values which means that the economy was
constrained but not optimised. The case study was also limited
to poverty and climate change, albeit two of the biggest envi-
ronmental and social challenges for sustainability. Expanding
the scope to other sustainability challenges such as planetary
boundaries and further developing product labelling applica-
tions is recommended for further research.
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