DEGREE PROJECT IN ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING,

SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 2021

Life cycle assessment of

cotton yarns for IKEA
ANA VILLARREAL CAMPOS

RUCHIRA GOYAL

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
 Life cycle assessment of cotton yarns
for IKEA

Ana Villarreal Campos and Ruchira Goyal

Supervisor
Göran Finnveden

Examiner
Anna Björklund

Supervisor at IKEA
Neha Madan Asthana

Degree Project in Strategies for Sustainable Development (MSc in Sustainable Technology)

KTH Royal Institute of Technology
School of Architecture and Built Environment
Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering
SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
TRITA-ABE-MBT-12545

ii
Abstract

Cotton is one of the leading fibers in the textile industry due to its superior mechanical
qualities. It accounts for high environmental impacts, especially water consumption and
scarcity. Since cotton is a significant raw material for IKEA, it had set a target to source from
only sustainable sources such as from the Better Cotton Initiative, and recycled cotton. At the
same time, IKEA also has a commitment to transition to a circular business, which includes
recycling. This comparative and accounting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analyzes virgin (two
types - conventional cotton and Better Cotton) yarns, and mixed (virgin plus recycled) cotton
yarns from some of the top supplier countries of the company, on a cradle-to-gate perspective.
Water quantity and quality impacts are analyzed together with climate change. The Life Cycle
Impact Assessment (LCIA) shows that there is a proportional reduction in impacts of the
mixed yarns as recycled cotton percentage is increased, since the impacts of recycled yarns are
much lower than virgin yarns. In virgin conventional yarns, the main stages that contributed
the most to the impacts were cotton cultivation and spinning. Irrigation used in cotton
cultivation accounted for the most impacts in water availability. For water quality, the impacts
were mostly coming from electricity use and direct field emissions from cotton cultivation. In
addition, this study demonstrated that there were high differences between the impacts in the
countries studied. The results also suggested that there were water savings by using Better
Cotton compared to conventional cotton yarns.

Key words: LCA, environmental impact, water impact, recycled cotton yarns, virgin cotton
yarns, Better Cotton, spinning, cradle-to-gate

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Sammanfattning

Bomull är en av de vanligaste fibrerna i textilindustrin på grund av dess överlägsna mekaniska

egenskaper. Den orsakar dock hög miljöpåverkan, särskilt vattenförbrukning och -brist.
Eftersom bomull är ett viktigt råmaterial för IKEA, har de satt ett mål att endast använda
hållbara källor, som från Better Cotton Initiative, och återvunnen bomull. Samtidigt har IKEA
också åtagit sig att övergå till en cirkulär affärsmodell som inkluderar återvinning. Denna
jämförande studie beaktar livscykelanalys (LCA) och analyserar jungfruligt garn (två typer -
konventionell bomull och Better Cotton) och blandat bomullsgarn (jungfru plus återvunna)
från några av företagets främsta leverantörsländer ur ett vagga-till-port-perspektiv.
Vattenmängder och kvalitetseffekter analyseras tillsammans med klimatförändringar.
Livscykelbedömningen (LCIA) visar att det finns en proportionell minskning av effekterna av
de blandade garnerna när andelen återvunnen bomull ökar, eftersom effekterna av återvunnet
garn är mycket lägre än jungfruliga garner. I konventionellt jungfruligt garn var bomullsodling
och spinning de främsta stegen som bidrog mest till effekterna. Bevattning som används vid
bomullsodling svarade för de största effekterna på tillgången till vatten. För vattenkvaliteten
kom effekterna huvudsakligen från elanvändning och direkta utsläpp från bomullsodling.
Dessutom visade denna studie att det fanns stora effektskillnader mellan de studerade
länderna. Resultaten antydde också att det fanns vattenbesparingar genom att använda Better
Cotton jämfört med konventionella bomullsgarn.

Nyckelord: LCA, miljöpåverkan, vattenpåverkan, återvunnet bomullsgarn, virgin

bomullsgarn, Better Cotton, spinning, vagga-till-port

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Preface
All of the work presented in this report is part of a shared degree project between Ana Villarreal
Campos and Ruchira Goyal at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Both of the authors have contributed equally for the completion of this project. All of the
literature review, data collection, and modelling process was done together by the authors
along with activities such as meetings with the company and academic supervisors. While
some sections of this report were written individually, collaboration was present throughout
the report and the sections of discussion and recommendations, and conclusion were co-
authored by both the authors.

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Acknowledgements
This degree project at KTH Royal Institute of Technology has been conducted in collaboration
with IKEA. We would like to thank our supervisor Göran Finnveden for his support, insights,
and feedback throughout the project. We are grateful to our supervisor Neha Madan Asthana
at IKEA for her contribution with time, experience, and constant guidance. We would also like
to thank Yaw Sasu-Boakye, Arvind Rewal, Mirjam Luc, and Federico Garcia Agut for providing
us with valuable support, feedback, and data along with other colleagues. Lastly, we would like
to thank our families and friends for their constant moral support.

Ana Villarreal Campos and Ruchira Goyal

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Table of contents
Abstract .....................................................................................................................................iii
Sammanfattning ....................................................................................................................... iv
Preface........................................................................................................................................ v
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ x
Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................... xii
Glossary of terms ..................................................................................................................... xii
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1
2. Aim and research questions ................................................................................................... 2
3. Background ............................................................................................................................ 2
3.1 IKEA’s sustainability strategy and goals .......................................................................... 2
3.2 Cotton from more sustainable sources (CMSS) ............................................................... 4
3.3 Impacts related to water use in LCA ................................................................................ 6
3.4 Literature review of previous LCA studies on cotton textiles ..........................................8
4. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 10
4.1 Life Cycle Assessment ..................................................................................................... 10
4.1.1 Goal and scope...........................................................................................................11
4.1.2 Life Cycle Inventory ..................................................................................................11
4.1.3 Life Cycle Impact Assessment.................................................................................. 12
4.1.4 Life Cycle Interpretation .......................................................................................... 12
4.2 Scenario analysis - Assessing future water consumption .............................................. 12
5. Life cycle assessment of cotton yarns .................................................................................. 13
5.1 Goal and scope ................................................................................................................ 13
5.1.1 Functional Unit and Reference Flow ........................................................................ 13
5.1.2 System boundaries ................................................................................................... 13
5.1.3 Intended audience .................................................................................................... 15
5.1.4 Allocation procedures .............................................................................................. 15
5.1.5 Data collection strategy ............................................................................................ 15
5.1.6 Impact categories and impact assessment methods ................................................ 16
Choice of impact categories .......................................................................................... 16
Choice of LCIA methods ............................................................................................... 17
5.1.7 Scenario and sensitivity analyses ............................................................................. 19
5.1.8 Assumptions and limitations ................................................................................... 19

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 5.2 Life Cycle Inventory ...................................................................................................... 20
5.2.1 Virgin conventional cotton yarns ............................................................................ 20
5.2.2 Recycled and mixed cotton yarns ............................................................................ 23
5.2.3 Better Cotton virgin yarns ....................................................................................... 26
5.3 Life Cycle Impact assessment......................................................................................... 27
5.3.1 Conventional virgin cotton yarns vs. mixed cotton yarns ........................................ 27
5.3.2 Conventional virgin yarns across regions ................................................................ 29
5.3.3 Conventional vs. BCI virgin cotton yarns ............................................................... 40
5.4 Uncertainties ................................................................................................................. 40
5.4.1 Data uncertainties ................................................................................................... 40
5.4.2 Model uncertainties ................................................................................................. 41
5.4.3 Impact assessment uncertainties ............................................................................ 41
5.5 Scenario analysis ............................................................................................................ 42
5.5.1 Renewable energy in spinning for conventional virgin cotton yarns in China and
India.................................................................................................................................. 42
5.5.2 Recycled cotton yarns in China ............................................................................... 43
5.6 Sensitivity analysis .........................................................................................................44
5.6.1 Analyzing water scarcity with the method by Hoekstra et al. (2012) ......................44
6. Assessing IKEA’s future water consumption ....................................................................... 45
7. Discussion and recommendations .......................................................................................46
7.1 Sustainability actions ......................................................................................................46
7.2 Data collection and inventory modelling .......................................................................46
7.3 Sustainability decision-making ...................................................................................... 47
8. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................48
9. References ............................................................................................................................ 49
Appendix I – Recycled cotton inventory questionnaire .......................................................... 54
Appendix II - Inventory calculations ....................................................................................... 55
Appendix III - Characterization results ................................................................................... 56

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List of Tables
Table 1: IKEA’s actions in connection to the SDGs goals (IKEA, 2020b, pp.83-84).

Table 2: Environmental principles in the Better Cotton standard (Better Cotton Initiative,
2018).

Table 3: Overview of previous LCA studies of cotton.

Table 4: Life cycle stages considered for virgin cotton.

Table 5: Life cycle stages considered for recycled cotton.

Table 6: Choice of LCIA impact categories and the relevance to IKEA’s sustainability goals.

Table 7: Choice of LCIA methods.

Table 8: Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, India.

Table 9: Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, China.

Table 10: Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, Pakistan.

Table 11: Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, US.

Table 12: Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, Brazil.

Table 13: Datasets used for modelling recycled cotton yarns, Country x.

Table 14: Datasets used for modelling renewable energy share, Country x.

Table 15: Sub-assemblies used for modelling mixed cotton yarns, 50% recycled 50% virgin,
China.

Table 16: Sub-assemblies used for modelling mixed cotton yarns, 25% recycled 75% virgin,
China.

Table 17: Environmental and economic indicators reported by BCI for FY18-19 (Better Cotton
Initiative, 2021d).

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List of Figures
Figure 1: Cradle-to-Gate Life Cycle of virgin cotton yarns

Figure 2: Cradle-to-Gate Life Cycle of recycled cotton yarns

Figure 3: Cradle-to-Gate Life Cycle of virgin cotton yarns.

Figure 4: Cradle-to-Gate Life Cycle of recycled cotton yarns.

Figure 5: Comparative results for the impacts of 100% virgin yarns, mixed yarns 75/25 (75%
virgin plus 25% recycled), mixed yarns 50/50 (50% virgin plus 50% recycled).

Figure 6: Split of the impacts by life cycle stages of the recycled yarns.

Figure 7: Country-wise comparative results for water consumption of conventional virgin

yarns (ReCiPe Midpoint (H) 2016 method).

Figure 8: Country-wise comparative results for water scarcity footprint of conventional virgin
yarns (AWARE method).

Figure 9: Split of water consumption of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in China
and Pakistan.

Figure 10: Country-wise comparative results for freshwater eutrophication of conventional

virgin yarns (ReCiPe Midpoint (H) 2016 method).

Figure 11: Split of freshwater eutrophication impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle
stages in China and India.

Figure 12: Country-wise comparative results for marine eutrophication impact of conventional
virgin yarns (ReCiPe Midpoint (H) 2016 method).

Figure 13: Split of marine eutrophication impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle
stages in China and India.

Figure 14: Country-wise comparative results for aquatic acidification of conventional virgin
yarns (IMPACT 2002+ method).

Figure 15: Split of aquatic acidification impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages
in China and India.

Figure 16: Country-wise comparative results for freshwater ecotoxicity impact of conventional
virgin yarns (USEtox 2.0 method).

Figure 17: Split of freshwater ecotoxicity impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages
in China and India.

Figure 18: Country-wise comparative results for human toxicity, cancer impact of conventional
virgin yarns (USEtox 2.0 method).

Figure 19: Split of human toxicity, cancer impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle
stages in China and India.

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Figure 20: Country-wise comparative results for human toxicity, non-cancer impact of
conventional virgin yarns (USEtox 2.0 method).

Figure 21: Split of human toxicity, non-cancer impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle
stages in China and India.

Figure 22: Country-wise comparative results for climate change impact of conventional virgin
yarns (IPCC GWP100a method).

Figure 23: Split of climate change impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in
China and India.

Figure 24: Water consumption per unit BCI yarns compared to conventional virgin yarns in
China, India, and Pakistan.

Figure 25: Comparison of renewable and conventional energy in spinning for conventional
virgin yarns, China.

Figure 26: Comparison of renewable and conventional energy in spinning for conventional
virgin yarns, India.

Figure 27: Comparative results for the impacts of “China virgin yarn 100/0”, “China mixed
yarn 50/50” and “China-Country x mixed yarn 50/50”.

Figure 28: Water use impacts by AWARE and Hoekstra et al., 2012 methods across countries.

Figure 29: Percentage change in water consumption from cotton yarns for IKEA in FY25 and
FY30 in future scenarios.

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Abbreviations
BCI Better Cotton Initiative
FY Financial Year
GHG Greenhouse Gas
ISO International Organization for Standardization
Kg Kilogram
kWh Kilowatt Hours
LCA Life Cycle Assessment
LCI Life Cycle Inventory
LCIA Life Cycle Impact Assessment
TBC Towards Better Cotton
WWF World Wildlife Fund

Glossary of terms
Better Cotton:
Cotton grown according to the Better Cotton Standard by BCI.

Towards Better Cotton:

Cotton grown by farmers working towards the Better Cotton Standard by BCI.

xii
1. Introduction
Cotton is the most used natural fiber in the production of textiles. It made up 23% of the total
textile fiber market in 2020, second only to polyester fibers (Textile Exchange, 2020, p. 6).
Cotton continues to be the preferred fiber for its superior mechanical properties including
strength, durability, and absorption in addition to being a soft, comfortable, and washable
material (Ravandi and Valizadeh, 2011). Despite such surpassing qualities compared to other
fibers, cotton accounts for high environmental impacts, which have been well documented
(Thinkstep and Cotton Incorporated, 2016; Quantis, 2018).

The production of cotton textiles shows particularly high impacts related to freshwater
withdrawal and ecosystem quality (Quantis, 2018, p. 20). A large fraction of the environmental
impacts related to cotton textiles occur in the production stages such as fiber production, yarn
production, fabric preparation, and dyeing and finishing (Quantis, 2018, p.19; Roos et al.,
2016, p. 695). However, the magnitude of impacts shows huge variations depending on the
suppliers’ locations, the farming practices such as irrigation, pesticides and fertilizer use,
tillage, use of genetically modified cotton varieties, etc. (Sandin et al., 2019, pp. 30-33).

In light of the vast environmental impacts caused by textiles, and especially cotton, companies
around the world have taken part in initiatives to mitigate impacts, such as the well-known
work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on circularity, in which IKEA, a multinational home
furnishing company, has taken part. Under such a partnership, IKEA has committed to
accelerate the circular economy transition by giving products and materials an extended life
through reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling as a last resource (IKEA,
2020a).

In addition, IKEA has set high sustainability ambitions such as becoming ‘Climate Positive’
and transforming their business to 100% circular by 2030 (IKEA, 2020b, p. 22). It has also
committed to protect ecosystems and improve biodiversity (ibid.). Cotton is used by IKEA in
various products such as sofas, cushions, bedsheets, and curtains. In 2020, IKEA used about
0.5% of the total cotton lint produced in the world (IKEA, 2020b, p. 49). Thus, given cotton’s
high environmental impacts, it is an important raw material for IKEA’s sustainability agenda.
Since 2015, IKEA has sourced its cotton from more sustainable sources such as the Better
Cotton Initiative (BCI), Towards Better Cotton (TBC), the e3 Sustainable Cotton program, and
recycled cotton (ibid.). It has also been involved in partnerships with the World Wildlife Fund
(WWF) in various sustainability projects regarding cotton cultivation (ibid.).

Considering the focus of IKEA on circularity and sustainable cotton cultivation, this thesis
report estimates the potential environmental impacts of mechanically recycled cotton yarns
and virgin yarns (conventional and Better Cotton) across the countries supplying cotton to
IKEA. Scenarios to gauge the potential of recycled cotton to reduce water consumption in the
future are also analyzed.

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2. Aim and research questions
The purpose of this study is to inform IKEA about the environmental hotspots and trade-offs
of virgin and mixed (virgin plus recycled) cotton yarns used in their supply chain. Particularly,
the study focuses on water-related impacts and climate change. In addition, the study explores
what are the potential environmental impacts of increasing the percentage of recycled cotton
in the mixed yarns. The purpose of the study is achieved by performing a comparative
environmental Life Cycle Assessment of virgin (two types - conventional cotton and Better
Cotton) yarns, and mixed (virgin plus recycled) cotton yarns from some of the top supplier
countries of the company. The results of the study will be used to answer the following research
questions:

● What are the relevant potential environmental impacts and trade-offs for the life cycle
of these two types (virgin and mixed) of cotton yarns?
● What are the potential environmental impacts of increasing the percentage of recycled
cotton in the mixed yarns?
● How do the potential environmental impacts of virgin cotton yarn production vary
across the countries that supply cotton to IKEA?
● What are the differences between Better Cotton and conventional cotton in terms of
the potential environmental impacts?

3. Background

3.1 IKEA’s sustainability strategy and goals

IKEA’s ambition is “to become people and planet positive, and to inspire and enable many
people to live a better everyday life within the boundaries of the planet by 2030” (IKEA, 2020b,
p.12). IKEA states that their sustainability ambitions and commitments for 2030 are in line
with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (ibid.). SDG goals 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17
and IKEA’s action on them are of special relevance to this study, as summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. IKEA’s actions in connection to the SDGs goals (IKEA, 2020b, pp.83-84).
Nr. SDG goal IKEA’s action

6. Clean Water and ● Develop products and solutions related to the resource
Sanitation efficiency for consumption of water.
● Work towards Water Positive ambition.

7. Affordable and ● Develop products and solutions related to clean energy.

Clean Energy ● Aim for using 100% renewable energy throughout the
IKEA value chain.

12. Responsible ● To develop and promote affordable home furnishing

Consumption and solutions and knowledge, with the aim to improve people’s
Production ability to live within the limits of the planet.
● To strive for circular and sustainable consumption.
● To design all products for circularity, from reuse,
refurbish, remanufacture, and recycle.
● To strive for only using renewable or recycled materials.

2
 ● To join forces with other stakeholders to enable a circular
society.

13. Climate Action ● Aim to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions

(GHG) from IKEA’s value chain, while still growing as a
business.

14. Life Below Water ● To lead regenerative projects to clean polluted waters and
protect biodiversity, including those to prevent plastic
pollutants from entering waterways and oceans.

15. Life On Land ● To source from more sustainable sources.

17. Partnerships for the ● To drive and support change together with others to reach
Goals the IKEA sustainability goals.

There are three focus areas within IKEA’s sustainability goals: Healthy & sustainable living,
Circular & climate positive, and Fair & equal. The first area works towards inspiring and
enabling people to live healthier and sustainable lives, also with promoting sustainable
consumption and circularity, and creating a movement within society about better everyday
living. The Circular and Climate positive area commits to become a circular business; to
become climate positive; and to regenerate resources, protect ecosystems, and improve
biodiversity. The last focus area, Fair & equal, aims to provide and support decent and
meaningful work along the value chain, to be an inclusive business and to promote equality
(IKEA, 2020b, p.13).

Within the Circular & climate positive focus, IKEA has defined strategic goals for 2030 for
becoming a circular business, which includes striving to only use renewable or recycled
materials, by incorporating and finding new sources and developing new materials but being
the main focus to reduce the use of materials and especially virgin materials. This commitment
is important for IKEA as they state that 60% of their products are based on renewable
materials, such as wood and cotton, and 10% contain recycled materials. Furthermore, they
mention that the need for recycled materials is necessary for enabling a circular society, which
is of importance since by increasing their demand for recycled materials and by sourcing waste
material responsibly, they state that they aim to prevent materials from polluting the
environment. However, there are challenges that IKEA faces with respect to using recycling
materials, such as availability, quality, technical issues in production, and end-of-life
collection (IKEA, 2020b, pp.22-27). Moreover, they state that to increase the use of recycled
materials, global sourcing needs to be significantly increased (IKEA, 2020b, p.56).

With respect to IKEA’s ambition to use responsibly sourced materials in their offer, including
renewable materials, they state that they aim to ensure that they have a positive impact by
regenerating resources, protecting ecosystems, and improving biodiversity. The main
challenges of sourcing renewable materials are that resource-intensive agricultural systems
contribute to deforestation, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, soil depletion and high levels of
GHGs and negative impacts on farmers and society. To tackle such challenges, IKEA works
with standards and sourcing materials from more sustainable sources. For example, since
2015 all of the cotton used for IKEA home furnishing solutions comes from sources defined as
more sustainable or recycled sources, such as BCI (IKEA, 2020b, pp.41-49).

Another important ambition for IKEA is towards becoming “water positive by being good
water stewards and improving the quality and availability of water for the people and the
planet, throughout the IKEA value chain” (IKEA, 2020b, p.57). Such a goal acknowledges the
3
vulnerability to water stress that IKEA customers and suppliers encounter with, and the
deterioration of freshwater sources on a global scale, due to environmental impacts. IKEA has
identified four focus areas within becoming water positive, which are: to enable reduced water
consumption, to improve water quality, to increase water availability and to lead and influence
(IKEA, 2020b, p.57).

Such focus areas involve actions such as: create new ways to save water along the value chain
and from the customer’s side; advocate for and comply with harmonized discharge limits from
water treatment plants to prevent future deposits of pollutants on land and in water; develop
partnerships to establish long term goals and actions to enable increased water availability in
high and extremely water stressed areas, focusing on where the most water-intense raw
materials and manufacturing are; share knowledge to create awareness and demand collective
actions for improving water quality and increasing availability along IKEA’s value chain
(IKEA, 2020b, p.57).

IKEA’s work for 2021 includes creating new goals and KPIs, as well as a baseline,
benchmarking, and actions to go forward and to develop improvements of water quality and
availability. Moreover, yearly audits of water management and effluent water treatment plants
throughout the supply chain will continue, as they can help to get insights about the progress.
Furthermore, partnering with different players is necessary to reinforce actions where they are
mostly needed (IKEA, 2020b, p.57).

3.2 Cotton from more sustainable sources (CMSS)

IKEA has been sourcing all of its cotton from more sustainable sources since September 2015
(IKEA, 2020b, p. 42). More sustainable sources have been defined as “cotton grown to the
Better Cotton standard, by farmers working towards Better Cotton, recycled cotton and more
sustainable cotton from the USA (such as the e3 Cotton Program)”. The Better Cotton standard
is developed by the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) - a global not-for-profit organization that
works with sustainable cotton cultivation and provides certification for the same (Better
Cotton Initiative, 2021a). IKEA was a founding member of BCI along with organizations such
as Adidas, Gap Inc., H&M, Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and others (Better Cotton
Initiative, 2021b). The e3® Cotton Program is a similar certification scheme provided by BASF
in the US (BASF, 2021).

Better Cotton as per BCI was grown across 23 countries by about 2.1 million farmers as of
2018-19 and accounted for about 22% of the global cotton lint production (Better Cotton
Initiative, 2021c). The Better Cotton standard system by BCI provides a set of ‘Principles and
Criteria’ for providing a global definition of Better Cotton for these farmers. These relate to the
environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability. The 7 principles in the
Better Cotton standard system are the broad sustainability requirements with respect to crop
protection practices, water stewardship, soil health, biodiversity and land use, fiber quality,
decent work, and management systems. Each principle has a set of criteria that must be met
and indicators that measure these criteria. In addition, BCI provides guidance for practical
implementation of these principles to comply with the requirements. Table 2. gives an
overview of the 4 environmental principles in the Better Cotton standard. (Better Cotton
Initiative, 2018)

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Table 2. Environmental principles in the Better Cotton standard (Better Cotton Initiative, 2018)
Sr. BCI Principle Main criteria/ actions to comply with the principle
No.

1. “BCI farmers minimize ● Adoption of Integrated Pest Management technologies.

the harmful impacts of ● Use of pest control techniques other than pesticides.
crop protection ● Phasing out use of highly hazardous, carcinogenic,
practices”
mutagenic, or reprotoxic substances in pesticides.

2. “BCI farmers promote ● Adoption of a Water Stewardship Plan by mapping and

water stewardship” understanding local water resources, identifying water
quantity and quality issues, exploring the potential of
rainwater harvesting, and mapping wetlands.
● Managing soil moisture by adopting cotton varieties
adapted to the region, optimizing the time of sowing,
mulching and conservation tillage, irrigation
scheduling, etc.
● Applying efficient irrigation practices such as sub-
surface drip irrigation, micro-irrigation, managing
water storage and conveyance structures.
● Managing water quality by minimizing pesticide run-off
and leaching, using organic pesticides, mechanical
weeding, synchronizing fertilizer supply with crop
demand and optimizing with respect to irrigation,
preventing soil erosion, run-off, and leaching of
nutrients, protecting wetland areas.
● Collaborative action with other water users,
governments, and society for sustainable water use at a
local level.

3. “BCI Farmers care for ● Identifying and analyzing the soil type, measuring
soil health” macro-nutrients and pH, and soil organic matter.
● Enhancing and maintaining soil structure by choosing
right tillage practices including low and zero-tillage and
avoiding soil compaction, crop rotation and
intercropping. Good soil structure helps in improving
water retention and availability due to increased
porosity.
● Enhancing and maintaining soil fertility by precision
agriculture technologies for fertilizer application.

4. “BCI Farmers ● Identifying and mapping biodiversity values in the

enhance biodiversity farming area such as natural vegetation, water bodies,
and use land riparian buffers, etc. along with external experts.
responsibly”
● Identifying and restoring areas degraded by erosion,
overgrazing, waterlogging, etc.
● Encouraging natural pest control by enhancing
populations of beneficial insects, use of organic
pesticides, cultural and mechanical control of pests.
5
 ● Crop rotation
● Protecting riparian areas near water bodies from farm
runoff and soil erosion to improve water quality and
conserve the biodiversity supported by them.

Cotton cultivation is vulnerable to climate change as higher temperatures and changes in

precipitation could lead to reduced yields (Better Cotton Initiative, 2018, p. 153). The pressure
on water availability is also expected to increase especially in places already facing water stress
(ibid., p. 32). Within the BCI principles, the climate change mitigation strategies are related
to the fertilizer management methods that ensure minimized emissions of nitrous oxide - a
greenhouse gas and the management of soil carbon to increase carbon stocks. At the same
time, many of the principles and actions in Table 2 can be seen to help in climate change
adaptation as they build resilience in the farming system towards a range of soil and climatic
conditions. (ibid., p. 154)

Along with the certification schemes, IKEA has worked with the WWF on projects such as
weather-resilient cotton production in Jalna, India, agroforestry project along with BCI in
India which focused on conservation of wetlands, climate-resilient crop production in
Pakistan, as well as an agroforestry project in Pakistan where about 82000 trees were planted.
In Turkey, IKEA has partnered with WWF and established a multi-stakeholder platform to
develop a Water Stewardship model in the Buyuk Menderes river basin that can be replicated
in other parts of Turkey that grow cotton. In Dongying, China, a Towards Better Cotton project
was started with a local partner by IKEA in April 2020 (IKEA, 2020, p. 50) Thus, IKEA is
engaged with sustainable cotton cultivation at many levels.

3.3 Impacts related to water use in LCA

Impacts related to water use can be due to consumptive water use, degradative water use and
due to polluting emissions affecting water. Some terms related to water use to be considered
are-
1. Water withdrawal - refers to the total water that is input into a process or system
(Boulay et al., 2018)

2. Water consumption - refers to the part of the withdrawn water that is lost from the
original watershed or river basin due to integration into the product,
evapotranspiration, or release into other watersheds or the ocean (Boulay et al., 2018)
a. Blue water consumption – refers to the consumption of surface and
groundwater (Hoekstra et al., 2011a, p. 2)
b. Green water consumption – refers to the consumption of rainwater that does
not become run-off (Hoekstra et al., 2011a, p. 2)

3. Water degradation - refers to degradation of the quality of water which is released

back from the process to the same watershed compared to the quality of the withdrawn
water (Life Cycle Initiative, 2016)

Water consumption and degradation can lead to impacts on human health and ecosystems
due to lowered availability of water for other users while water degradation and polluting
emissions can also lead to direct impacts from pollution such as eutrophication, acidification,
and toxicity (ibid.).

The ISO 14046 standard on water footprinting relies on an LCA approach to estimate impacts
related to freshwater (Boulay et al., 2018). Impacts related to water use began to be included
in the LCA approach by using withdrawal-to-availability ratios (WTA) as characterization
6
factors at the midpoint level (Frischknecht et al. 2008; Pfister et al. 2009 as cited in Boulay et
al., 2018). Here, availability refers to the hydrological availability of water considering
precipitation and evapotranspiration in the region. Later, water consumption-to-availability
(CTA) ratios were used in some methods, considering no impacts related to the water which is
withdrawn but is released back to the same region i.e., not considering water degradation
(ibid.).

However, the most recent consensus-based method - AWARE (available water remaining),
developed by Boulay et al. (2018) uses the inverse of availability minus demand (AMD) as a
factor. Here, demand refers to both the human and ecosystem demands of water. The
characterization factor in the AWARE method (CFAWARE) is a ratio of the world average AMD
and the AMD in the specific region. These factors are available at a sub-watershed level and
monthly time steps for regions across the globe. They are also aggregated to country-level and
annual time steps. The following equations give an overview of the calculation of CF AWARE.
Further details can be found in Boulay et al. (2018).

AMDi = (Availability - HWC - EWR)/Area (1)

where,
AMDi = AMD in region (watershed) i;
Availability = Actual runoff in the watershed (m3/month);
HWC = Human water consumption (m3/month);
EWR = Environmental water requirements (m3/month);
Area = Surface area in the watershed (m3)

Stei = 1/ AMDi (2)

where,
STei = surface-time equivalent required to generate one cubic
meter of unused water in the region (m2.month/ m3)

CFAWARE = STei / STeworld avg

= AMDworld avg/AMDi , for Demand < Availability (3)
where,
AMDworld avg = consumption weighted average of AMDi over the whole
world
= 0.0136 (m3/ m2.month)

Some cut-offs are applied to the characterization factor -

CFAWARE = Max
= 100, for Demand >= Availability or
AMDi < 0.01 * AMDworld avg (4a)

CFAWARE = Min
= 0.1, for AMDi > 10*AMDworld avg (4b)

The results from the impact assessment using AWARE method show the water scarcity
footprint (in m3 world eq.) which is calculated as -

Water scarcity footprint = Water consumption (inventory) * CFAWARE

This estimates “the potential to deprive another freshwater user (humans and ecosystem) by
consuming freshwater in that region” (ibid.).
7
Water degradation i.e., quality issues can be considered within LCA through indicators for
eutrophication, acidification, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity (Boulay et al., 2015).

3.4 Literature review of previous LCA studies on cotton textiles

A literature review was carried out to get an overview of previous LCA studies of cotton textiles.
Life cycle assessment has been commonly used as a sustainability assessment tool for textile
materials and products. Table 3. shows an overview of previously done LCA studies relevant
for this thesis.

Table 3. Overview of previous LCA studies of cotton

Sr.
No. Article title Scope Reference

1 Measuring Fashion 2018: Environmental Impact of Cradle-to-grave Quantis, 2018

the Global Apparel and Footwear Industries Study

2 LCA benchmarking study on textiles made of Cradle-to-grave van der

cotton, polyester, nylon, acryl, or elastane Velden et al.,
2014
3 Environmental assessment of Swedish fashion Cradle-to-grave Roos et al.,
consumption. Five garments – sustainable futures 2015a
4 Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Cotton and Cradle-to-gate La Rosa and
Other Natural Fibers for Textile Applications Grammatikos
, 2019
5 Environmental impact of textile fibers – what we Cradle-to-gate Sandin et al.,
know and what we don’t know 2019

6 Environmental assessment of colored fabrics and Cradle to factory Terinte et al.,

opportunities for value creation: spin-dyeing gate 2014
versus conventional dyeing of modal fabrics

7 Is Unbleached Cotton Better Than Bleached? Cradle-to-gate Roos et al.,

Exploring the Limits of Life-Cycle Assessment in 2015b
the Textile Sector

8 An inventory framework for inclusion of textile Cradle-to-grave Roos et al.,

chemicals in life cycle assessment 2018
9 The life cycle assessment of organic cotton fiber- a Cradle-to-farm Textile
global average gate Exchange,
2014
10 A case study of life cycle inventory of cotton curtain Cradle-to-grave Yasin et al.,
2014

11 LCA update of cotton fiber and fabric life cycle Cradle-to-grave Thinkstep
inventory and Cotton
Incorporated,
2016
12 Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of a White Cotton T-shirt Cradle-to-cradle Khan et
and Investigation of Sustainability Hot Spots: A al.,2018
Case Study.

8
 13 Life Cycle Assessment of Organic, BCI and Cradle-to-gate Shah et al.,
Conventional Cotton: A Comparative Study of 2018
Cotton Cultivation Practices in India

14 Life Cycle Assessment of Cotton Cultivation Cradle-to- Thinkstep,

Systems - Better Cotton, Conventional Cotton and farmgate 2018
Organic Cotton
15 A Carbon Footprint of Textile Recycling: A Case Gate‐to‐grave Zamani et al.,
Study in Sweden 2015

16 Environmental life cycle assessment of textile bio- Gate-to-cradle Subramanian

recycling et al., 2020

17 LCA on recycling cotton Cradle-to-gate Wendin, M.,

2016

18 Could the recycled yarns substitute for the virgin Cradle-to-gate Liu et al.,
cotton yarns: a comparative LCA 2020

19 Environmental impact of Recover cotton in textile Cradle-to-gate Esteve-

industry and cradle-to- Turrillas and
grave de la Guardia,
2017

The first study in table 3 provides a general overview of the environmental impacts of the
apparel and footwear industries. Studies 2 to 5 analyze the environmental impacts of different
textiles, fibres, and garments. Studies 6 to 8 assess environmental impacts of textiles,
comparing choices related to spinning methods, bleaching, and the use of chemicals. Studies
9 to 14 focus on cotton, including cradle-to-gate and cradle-to-grave perspectives, and the
different types of cotton, such as organic, conventional, and BCI. Lastly, studies 15 to 19
analyze the environmental impacts of different recycling techniques, including mechanical
recycling of cotton yarns.

Out of these, some particularly relevant studies are the ones by Wendin (2016), Liu et al.
(2020), Thinkstep (2018), Shah et al. (2018), and Esteve-Turrillas and de la Guardia (2017).
The study by Wendin (2016) compared virgin vs. recycled fibers from a cradle-to-(ginning)
gate perspective. The hotspots were found in the cotton cultivation for virgin fiber, while for
recycled fiber the hotspots were sea and land transport. The study by Liu et al. (2020) also
compared virgin and recycled yarns but on a cradle-to-(spinning) gate perspective. The
hotspots were cotton cultivation for virgin yarns, mostly from land occupation and irrigation;
and spinning for recycled yarns, due to electricity use. From a water depletion perspective,
recycled cotton was superior to virgin cotton because of the water consumption used in
irrigation.

The study by Esteve-Turrillas and de la Guardia (2017) compared recovered cotton from
recycled garments, and virgin cotton cultivated from traditional and organic crops. The results
showed that organic cotton had reductions of impacts such as acidification potential,
eutrophication potential and water use, however there was only a slight reduction for climate
change. Furthermore, there were reductions in all impact categories considered by using
recovered cotton, since cultivation, ginning, and dyeing processes were replaced by a high

9
efficacy cutting and shredding process. Therefore, recovered cotton noticeably reduced
environmental impacts compared to both types of virgin cotton.

The studies by Thinkstep (2018) and Shah et al. (2018) compared BCI, conventional, and
organic cotton on a cradle-to-farm gate perspective, which focuses on cotton cultivation
systems. The study by Thinkstep (2018) analyzed the region of Khargone district in the state
of Madhya Pradesh in India. The results showed that organic cotton had less environmental
impacts than BCI, which had very similar impacts as conventional cotton. The main hotspots
were found in the energy used in irrigation, tractor operations, pesticides and fertilizers
production, emissions from composts, etc. Moreover, the yield played a predominant role, as
higher yield together with good agriculture practices could optimize resource consumption
and improve environmental impacts.

The study by Shah et al. (2018) analyzed the cotton cultivation in the state of Maharashtra,
India. The results showed that organic cotton had a better environmental performance in most
categories compared to BCI and conventional cotton. However, in the case of blue water
consumption, BCI had a slightly lower impact compared to organic cotton. Organic cotton
showed the lowest impacts in mostly all categories due to the avoidance of synthetic pesticides
and chemical fertilizers. The only additives were manures, and the soil quality was controlled
by crop rotation. Not significant differences were observed between BCI and conventional
cotton yield.

Performing literature review of LCA studies on cotton textiles revealed that further research
is needed for country-level comparisons for conventional virgin yarns, country-level
comparisons for BCI cotton, and a specific analysis for IKEA’s recycled cotton process.

4. Methodology
This chapter explains the research methodology used in this thesis. The methodology included
a literature review about LCA studies for cotton textiles and sustainable cotton cultivation as
seen in sections 3.3 and 3.4. This was done to develop an understanding of the current research
in the field and define the aim and scope of the project. Next, to answer the research questions
formulated in the aim of the study, performing an environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
was considered a suitable method. LCAs are considered an appropriate tool to find hotspots
in the potential environmental impacts of products and materials and to compare them
(Graedel & Allenby, 2010). Methods such as questionnaires and interviews were used within
the LCA method to collect data. The environmental LCA method is further described in section
4.1. Another method used was a scenario analysis to estimate the future water consumption of
cotton yarns in IKEA. This is explained further in section 4.2.

4.1 Life Cycle Assessment

LCA is an environmental assessment tool that analyzes and quantifies material flows and
emissions that happen throughout the product life cycle: raw material acquisition,
manufacture, use, and end of life. LCA is a convenient tool for comparisons between products
or materials and it can suggest improvements to reduce environmental impacts (Graedel &
Allenby, 2010, p. 161). An LCA can help answer questions like: what is the potential impact of
a product system? Which product, material, or process has the lowest environmental
contribution throughout a life cycle? What changes to the actual system could affect the
potential environmental impacts across the life cycle? Which process affects the least to the
impact categories analyzed? How changes in the life cycle can be modified to reduce
environmental impacts of concern? (Curran, 2015). LCA studies can be conducted for different
scopes: a-cradle-to-grave analysis includes all the steps from raw materials until disposal;

10
whereas a cradle-to-gate analysis considers the steps from raw materials until factory gate,
which refers to manufacturing (Pre-sustainability, 2020).

A LCA can be performed to describe a single system -known as stand-alone LCA, or to compare
two or more systems -known as comparative LCA. Stand-alone LCAs are used to examine a
product and identify improvements along the life cycle to reduce environmental impacts.
Furthermore, this type of LCA can be helpful to set product baselines to measure future
improvements. Comparative LCAs are used to analyze for example different alternatives of
products, or design options (Curran, 2015).

In addition, depending on the goal and scope, LCA can be modelled as two different
perspectives - accounting or consequential LCA. Consequential modelling analyzes the
consequences of a change compared to a baseline scenario. On the other hand, accounting or
attributional modelling analyzes the environmental impact of a product and the hotspots
throughout the life cycle. Therefore, the results of an attributional LCA are referred to as an
environmental footprint (Pre-sustainability, 2016).

LCA is a standardized methodology, the standards are determined by the International

Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in ISO 14040 and 14044. The organization states that
LCA should include the stages: Goal and scope definition, Inventory analysis, Impact
assessment and Interpretation (Pre-sustainability, 2020). In the first stage, goal and scope
definition, the objective is to define the functional unit, the reference flow and the choice of
material or product alternatives (Ligthart & Ansems, 2012). During the second stage, life cycle
inventory, materials and energy that are required in each process of the life cycle are quantified
in the form of inputs and outputs. The last stage of the LCA process, life cycle impact
assessment, consists of analyzing the potential environmental impacts of the outputs of the
system (Graedel & Allenby 2010, pp. 163-164). The interpretation stage has the purpose of
ensuring that conclusions are well-substantiated (Pre-sustainability, 2020).

4.1.1 Goal and scope

The Goal and scope stage provides a clear definition of the product or material to be studied,
its life cycle, the function it fulfills (functional unit), and a description of the system boundaries
(Pre-sustainability, 2020). The functional unit describes the function that a product fulfills, it
is a quantified description of the service that a product system provides. A reference flow is
the amount of product that is needed for a product system to carry out the performance stated
by a functional unit (Curran, 2015). In addition, this stage states the reason for executing the
LCA; description about data and data quality requirements, assumptions, and limitations;
requirements and methods regarding the LCIA procedure; intended audiences (Pre-
sustainability, 2016). Section 5.1 describes the goal and scope of the LCA performed in this
project.

4.1.2 Life Cycle Inventory

A Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) has the purpose of quantifying inputs and outputs for a product
throughout its life cycle. Such inputs and outputs data are calculated for each unit process in
the life cycle. A unit process can be described as the processes involved in the life cycle of a
product, from raw material extraction to the end-of-life. E.g., cultivation of cotton, production
of furniture, use of a t-shirt, recycling of wastepaper, transport by lorry (Curran, 2015). Inputs
can be, for example, raw materials or energy. Whereas outputs are for example emissions of
pollutants, waste, by-products (Pre-sustainability, 2020).

Data sources in LCI can be either primary or secondary. Primary data is that which comes
directly from the source, such as: interviews, questionnaires, surveys, bookkeeping, on-site
measurements. Secondary data can come from: databases, statistics, literature (Curran, 2015).
11
Another way to define data types in LCI can be as foreground data and background data.
Foreground data relates to specific data needed to collect for modelling a system. This data
describes a specific product system or a specialized production system. On the other hand,
background data is used to produce generic materials, energy, transport, and waste
management, which can be found in databases or literature (Pre-sustainability, 2016).

One particular challenge arises in LCA when it comes to allocating or dividing environmental
burdens among different by-products or processes that have multiple inflows and outflows.
One way to solve this issue is to apply a system boundary expansion, which considers all
products affected by secondary material flows of the original product. However, this method
can become unmanageable due to data collection (Nicholson et al., 2009). Another way to
approach this challenge is to use the cut-off method, whereof the primary production of
materials is allocated to the primary user of a material. This implies for recycled products that
the primary producer does not get any credit for the supply of any recyclable materials. In
other words, recyclable materials are burden-free of impacts to recycling processes, and
secondary (recycled) materials only get the impacts of the recycling processes (Ecoinvent,
2021). Section 5.2 describes the Life Cycle Inventory for the LCA performed in this project.

4.1.3 Life Cycle Impact Assessment

The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) in LCA aims to quantify and evaluate the potential
environmental impacts of the flows in the inventory throughout the life cycle of a product or
service. For example, the CO2, CH4, N2O quantified emissions of a product can be analyzed to
determine the potential contribution to climate change. However, LCIA methodology does not
intend to quantify site-specific impacts, instead it converts inventory results to common units
and aggregates such converted results within an impact category. With the modelling of
impact pathways, LCIA evaluates potential ecological, and human effects, and resource
depletion (Curran, 2015).

In LCA, there are two different ways to analyze environmental impacts: as a midpoint or
endpoint approach. Such approaches look at different stages in the cause-effect chain to
calculate the impacts (Pre-sustainability, 2014). Midpoint indicators address single
environmental problems, for example climate change. Whereas endpoint indicators address
the environmental impact on higher aggregation levels, some examples are effect on human
health (in DALYs), ecosystem (PDF - species.yr) and resource scarcity (cost increase) (Bulle et
al., 2019). Section 5.3 describes the LCIA step and presents the results of it for the LCA
performed in this project.

4.1.4 Life Cycle Interpretation

Two objectives are identified in the Life Cycle Interpretation stage:
1. To analyze results, develop conclusions, indicate limitations, and provide transparent
recommendations based on the findings from the preceding stages in LCA.
2. To present understandable, complete, and consistent results in accordance with the
goal and scope of the LCA study (Curran, 2015).

4.2 Scenario analysis - Assessing future water consumption

After obtaining the results of the LCA, an assessment of future water consumption by cotton
yarns was done for IKEA to guide decision-making. Here, assumptions were made about the
growth in cotton volumes based on the business growth of IKEA. The financial year 2019 was
considered as the baseline year. Two scenarios were created for the growth in recycled cotton
volumes until the financial years 2025 and 2030. The results were compared to a business-as-

12
usual case where recycled cotton volumes remain the same as the baseline year. The results
can be seen in section 6.

5. Life cycle assessment of cotton yarns

5.1 Goal and scope

This comparative and accounting life cycle assessment study analyzes the potential
environmental impacts and hotspots associated with different types of cotton yarns - virgin vs.
mixed (virgin and mechanically recycled) cotton across different regions in IKEA’s supply
chain. Two types of cotton cultivation are analyzed for virgin cotton - conventional for all
chosen impact categories, and Better Cotton for water use impact.

5.1.1 Functional Unit and Reference Flow

The functional unit (FU) assessed in this study is 1 unit1 in mass of yarns to be used for
weaving, the reference flow is 1 unit in mass of yarn. The following cases are modelled in this
study for the functional unit of the mixed cotton yarns -
1. 1 unit of yarns consisting of 25% recycled yarns and 75% virgin yarns
2. 1 unit of yarns consisting of 50% recycled yarns and 50% virgin yarns

This is to ensure the equivalence of the functionality of 100% virgin yarns and the mixed yarns.
It is considered that recycled yarns can be mixed in a 25-50% ratio with virgin yarns without
compromising the quality of the products to be made, based on consultation within IKEA.

5.1.2 System boundaries

This study follows a cradle-to-gate approach to analyze environmental impacts of virgin cotton
yarns (conventional and BCI) and the mixed (virgin plus recycled) cotton yarns. The life cycle
stages for virgin cotton are seed cotton cultivation, fiber production, and yarn production as
observed in Figure 1. The life cycle stages for the recycled cotton considers raw material
collection, fiber production, and yarn production as observed in Figure 2. Transportation in
between the stages is considered in both life cycles.

1The exact mass unit cannot be revealed due to confidentiality reasons; however, all the results have
been calculated for a fixed reference flow in mass.
13
Figure 1. Cradle-to-gate life cycle of virgin cotton yarns.

Figure 2. Cradle-to-gate life cycle of recycled cotton yarns

Seed cotton cultivation and fiber production of virgin cotton is modelled for each of the top
supplier countries of IKEA - China, Brazil, India, Pakistan, and the United States (IKEA, 2019,
p. 50). Yarn production is assumed to take place in China, India, and Pakistan. Raw material
of recycled cotton comes from different places in Europe, while fiber and yarn production take
place in “Country x”2. Table 4 and Table 5 summarize the processes involved in each stage and
their geographical location, of both virgin and recycled cotton respectively.

2The real country name cannot be revealed due to confidentiality reasons; the country will henceforth
be referred to as “Country x” in this report.
14
Table 4. Life Cycle Stages considered for virgin cotton.
Life cycle stages Life cycle processes Geographical location
Seed cotton cultivation Field preparation Brazil, China, India,
Pakistan, and the US.
Planting
Field operations
Harvesting
Fiber production Ginning
Yarn production Spinning China, India, Pakistan.

Table 5. Life Cycle Stages considered for recycled cotton.

Life cycle stages Life cycle processes Geographical location
Raw material collection Garment collection Europe
and pre-processing
Sorting, accessories removal City 13, Country x
Fiber production Cutting
Shredding City 23, Country x
Yarn production Spinning

5.1.3 Intended audience

This study can be used to analyze the potential environmental impacts of the three materials
studied from a cradle-to-gate perspective, and therefore support IKEA’s decision-making
process regarding sustainability goals. This research is mostly intended for providing IKEA’s
Water Department with relevant information about the environmental impacts of the textile
raw materials studied. Moreover, this analysis could be of importance for the different
sustainability departments within the company.

5.1.4 Allocation procedures

Economic allocation is considered for all stages of virgin cotton yarn. As seen in the system
boundaries, the life cycle of the recycled yarns starts with the garment collection. A cut-off
allocation method is used here considering an open loop recycling of the garments collected.
Thus, the to-be-recycled garments arrive burden-free to their second life cycle. Mass-based
allocation is considered for the stages of recycled cotton yarn, this is because there is no
available information about the cost of the yarns and by-products.

5.1.5 Data collection strategy

Information about the supply chain for virgin and recycled yarns was provided by IKEA.

Virgin cotton yarns

The initial strategy for data collection was to get primary data from BCI for Better Cotton and
conventional cotton cultivation (which is considered as the baseline to compare Better Cotton)

3 The real city names cannot be revealed due to confidentiality reasons; the cities will henceforth be
referred to as “City 1” and “City 2” in this report.
15
via questionnaires and interviews. Attempts were made to collect this data for different
sourcing countries. However, this was not possible for all the countries in the scope within the
timeframe of the project. Field data for ginning, and spinning processes was also not available.
Thus, process datasets (available in SimaPro for internal use by IKEA) from CONSULTANT
GROUP1 (2021) for seed cotton cultivation, ginning, and spinning processes were used. The
transportation between the processes was estimated based on literature and simplifying
assumptions. This is explained in detail in section 5.2.1.

Recycled cotton yarns

As a first step, a series of interviews was carried out with the stakeholders involved in the
recycled cotton project. After understanding the supply chain, a questionnaire (see Appendix
I) was sent to obtain more detail information about the processes. The Ecoinvent 3.0 (Swiss
Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, 2014 as implemented in Simapro, Version 9.1; Pré
Consultants, 2015) database was used for background data. For example, for modelling the
energy mix and transportation. The inventory for recycled yarns is shown in detail in section
5.2.2.

5.1.6 Impact categories and impact assessment methods

Choice of impact categories

The impact categories for this LCA study were chosen considering the focus on water
availability and quality in the ‘Water Positive’ ambition of IKEA (IKEA, 2020b, p. 57). Thus,
water consumption and water scarcity footprint were considered to address impacts related to
water availability while freshwater and marine eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity, and
aquatic acidification indicators were considered to address impacts related to water quality
degradation. Human toxicity indicators were also included considering the connection of
water quality to this impact. Additionally, the climate change impact category was chosen
considering its significance to IKEA’s ‘Climate Positive’ goal (IKEA, 2020b, p. 22). Only
midpoint level indicators were chosen as an end point level analysis was deemed unnecessary
by the target audience within the company. Midpoint level analysis was considered sufficient
to answer the project’s research questions and provide actionable recommendations for the
company. Table 6 explains the relevance of the impact categories to IKEA’s sustainability
goals.

Table 6. Choice of LCIA impact categories and the relevance to IKEA’s sustainability goals.
Impact Relevance to IKEA
category

Water use ● Water Positive ambition, which includes improving quality and
availability of water for the people and the planet, throughout
IKEA’s value chain

Eutrophication ● Water Positive ambition

● Impacts on biodiversity

Ecotoxicity

Acidification

Human toxicity

16
 Climate change ● Climate Positive ambition
● High public and institutional interest

Choice of LCIA methods

The ReCiPe Midpoint (H) 2016 (Huijbregts et al., 2017) LCIA method was chosen for assessing
water consumption, freshwater eutrophication, and marine eutrophication. This was in
accordance with the recommendations by the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (UNEP,
2019) and the suggestions for updating Product Environmental Footprint method by the
European Commission by Zampori and Pant, (2019). The AWARE method was chosen for
assessing the water scarcity footprint as per the recommendation by the Water Use in Life
Cycle Assessment (WULCA) working group of the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (Boulay
et al., 2018). The USEtox 2.0 method including the recommended and interim factors
(USEtox, 2018) was chosen for assessing freshwater ecotoxicity, and human toxicity impacts
as also recommended by the UNEP (2019). The IMPACT 2002+ (Jolliet et al., 2003) method
was used for assessing aquatic acidification impacts as done by Boulay et al. (2015).

Water consumption (m3), ReCiPe Midpoint (H) 2016

This midpoint indicator measures the amount of water consumed i.e., the fraction of
withdrawn water which is not returned to the watershed of origin either due to evaporation,
product-integration, transfer to other watersheds, or disposal into the sea (Huijbregts et al.,
2017, pp. 73-76).

Water scarcity footprint (m3 world eq.), AWARE

This midpoint indicator is based on the scarcity equation of demand to availability as seen in
section 3.3, and it represents the relative available water remaining per area in a watershed,
after meeting the water demands of humans and ecosystems. Thus, this indicator evaluates
the potential of water deprivation to both humans and ecosystems (WULCA, 2021).

Eutrophication (kg P eq. and kg N eq.), ReCiPe Midpoint (H) 2016

Eutrophication is the process that starts when ecosystems receive a surplus of limiting
nutrients that are usually phosphorus or nitrogen. In LCA, LCIA models link emissions from
anthropogenic sources -such as synthetic fertilizers, to eutrophication impacts. In LCIA
practice, nitrogen is assumed as a limiting nutrient in marine systems, while phosphorus is
assumed as a limiting nutrient for freshwater. Thus, the freshwater eutrophication midpoint
indicator measures freshwater eutrophication potential in phosphorus equivalents (P eq.),
while the marine eutrophication indicator measures eutrophication potential in nitrogen
equivalents (N eq.) (UNEP, 2019).

Aquatic acidification (kg SO2 eq.), IMPACT 2002+

Aquatic acidification is a phenomenon caused by high levels of CO 2, which is escalating in

freshwater and marine ecosystems globally (Hannan and Rumen, 2018). In LCA, the potential
impacts of acidifying emissions on inland surface waters are assessed with characterization
factors (CF) (Heijungs et al. 1992; Humbert et al. 2004; Guinée et al. 2001 in Roy et al., 2014).
Such characterization factors assess the potential impacts of acidifying emissions to lakes (Roy
et al., 2014). The reference substance of the midpoint category aquatic acidification of the
method IMPACT 2002+ is kg SO2 eq. into air (Jolliet et al., 2003).

17
Ecotoxicity (PAF.m3.yr), USEtox 2.0 (recommended + interim)

In LCIA, ecotoxicity translates the environmental emissions of chemicals associated with the
life stages of a good or service into a measure of their potential ecotoxicological impacts. Thus,
it can assess the potential of a chemical substance to cause harm to ecosystems (UNEP, 2019).
In USEtox 2.0 method, one of the midpoint indicators is freshwater ecotoxicity which
measures the potential toxicity impacts on freshwater ecosystems in the units of potentially
affected fraction of species integrated over exposed volume and time - PAF.m3.yr (USEtox,
2018).

Human toxicity (cases), USEtox 2.0 (recommended + interim)

Human toxicity is referred to as the diseases caused by exposure to chemical substances

released throughout the lifecycle of either a product or service (UNEP, 2019) USEtox 2.0
covers two impact categories: human cancer toxicity, and human non-cancer toxicity. For each
of these impact categories, USEtox assesses the entire impact pathway from a chemical
emission to the final impact on humans (USEtox, 2018). At the midpoint level, the impact for
human toxicity is expressed as the number of cancer or non-cancer disease cases (ibid.).

GWP100 (kg CO2 eq.), IPCC 2013

IPCC 2013 is a method developed by the International Panel on Climate Change, it lists the
climate change factors of IPCC with a timeframe of 20 and 100 years (SimaPro, 2020). Thus,
these two timeframes represent the different versions of the method, whereof the impact can
be interpreted in terms of cumulative radiative forcing of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
that are cut off after 20 and 100 years (European Commission, 2011).

Table 7. Presents a summary of the choice of impact methods in each category.

Table 7. Choice of LCIA methods

Impact category Midpoint indicators Method

Water consumption (m3) ReCiPe Midpoint (H)

Water use 2016

Water scarcity footprint (m3 world eq) AWARE

Eutrophication Freshwater eutrophication (kg P eq.) ReCiPe Midpoint (H)

2016
Marine eutrophication (kg N eq.)

Acidification Aquatic acidification (kg SO2 eq.) IMPACT 2002+

Ecotoxicity Freshwater ecotoxicity (PAF.m3.yr) USEtox 2.0

(recommended +
interim)
Human Toxicity Human toxicity, cancer (cases)

Human toxicity, non-cancer (cases)

Climate change GWP100 (kg CO2 eq.) IPCC 2013

18
5.1.7 Scenario and sensitivity analyses
Two scenarios were modelled to check the effect of changing some major hotspots of impacts-
1. Analyzing the impacts with renewable energy in spinning for conventional cotton yarns
in China and India
2. Changing the location of recycled yarns production from Country x to China

The choice for sensitivity analysis was to compare water availability impacts with a different
method, being the Water stress index (m3) by Hoekstra et al., 2012. This midpoint indicator is
based on the scarcity equation of consumption-to-availability (CTA), which assesses the
amount of water consumed versus the amount of water available (SimaPro, 2017). Hoekstra
et al. (2011b) define blue water scarcity as the ratio of blue water footprint to blue water
availability.

5.1.8 Assumptions and limitations

There are certain assumptions and limitations that are involved in this project:

Virgin cotton

● All stages involved in the production of cotton yarns are considered to take place in the
same country. However, spinning is considered to take place in China (modelled along
with the transportation to China) when the dataset is not available in the country of
cotton cultivation (i.e., for the US and Brazil).

● 200km of distance are assumed between spinning mills and ports, for the cases where
spinning is considered to happen in China. The ports assumed are Savannah for the
US, Shanghai for China, and Port of Santos for Brazil.

● CONSULTANT GROUP1 (2021) is considered as the baseline “conventional cotton”

when comparing to BCI data, since no baseline data is available for BCI.

● BCI reductions are only applied to water use, therefore it is only possible to analyze
water availability impacts for this type of cotton yarn. Modeling of the field emissions
related to the other inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides, in order to estimate the
other impact categories is out of the scope of the project.

● Economic allocation is considered in all stages.

Recycled cotton

● Collected garments are assumed to come from Europe, no region in specific.

● The first life of the garments is cut-off from the system, other allocation methods could
not be analyzed in this study.

● Mass-based allocation is considered in stages where price information about the

products and by-products is not available.

● The renewable electricity mix of Country x mostly considers solar, wind, and
hydropower as renewable sources.
19
General

● The analysis of the study focuses on a country wise perspective, a more regional
analysis was not possible due data constraints.

5.2 Life Cycle Inventory

In this section, the calculation steps for the inventory flows are discussed and the input
datasets are documented.

5.2.1 Virgin conventional cotton yarns

The cradle-to-gate life cycle of virgin conventional cotton yarns is divided into the phases as
seen in section 5.1.2: seed-cotton cultivation, ginning of seed cotton, and spinning of the cotton
fibers, see Figure 3 for the flowchart of the process. This shows a generic diagram for the
production of yarns, irrespective of the country in which the cotton was grown. However, 5
different life cycles were modelled for cotton yarns made from cotton grown in China, Brazil,
India, Pakistan, and the US with assumptions about the locations of the ginning and spinning
processes as described in section 5.1.2.

Figure 3. Cradle-to-gate life cycle of virgin cotton yarns.

Seed-cotton cultivation

The seed-cotton cultivation phase includes processes such as field preparation, planting, field
operations such as irrigation, weed control, pest control, fertilization, and harvesting. Many
input flows from the technosphere such as fertilizers, pesticides, fuel and electricity for
agricultural machines and tractors are needed. Inputs from nature include water, land, carbon
dioxide, etc. Only the CO2 bound in the main product is considered in the uptake, not that in
the crop residues that remain in the field as these residues are decomposed and carbon is
released back. The emissions to air include fuel emissions, nitrous oxide - N2O, ammonia -
NH3, nitrogen oxides - NOx, etc. Emissions to water include nitrate and phosphate emissions
from the field as well as heavy metals. Emissions to soil include pesticides and heavy metal
emissions. The seed cotton cultivation market processes specific to the 5 countries in the scope
were obtained from the database by CONSULTANT GROUP1 (2021) (available as datasets in
SimaPro).
20
The water withdrawal for irrigation is modelled as an input flow as per the World Food LCA
Database (Nemecek et al., 2015) for the seed cotton cultivation processes used.

Water withdrawal for irrigation

This considers only the blue water withdrawal as green water is considered to not result in
environmental impacts (Nemecek et al., 2015). The irrigation water withdrawal (I withdrawal) is
calculated as a ratio of the evapotranspiration from irrigation - ETirr (m3/ton) to the irrigation
efficiency factor - EFirr (unitless):

Iwithdrawal = ETirr / EFirr (m3/ton)

Evapotranspiration from irrigation is the “blue water footprint” of the crop also known as the
“water consumed” in the cultivation process. The values for ET irr have been calculated by
Pfister et al. (2011) for cotton and many other crops, giving average country-specific values.
These have been used here. They use the CROPWAT model to estimate crop water
requirement (CWR) based on the reference evapotranspiration (ET o) reported by FAO (as
cited in Pfister et al., 2011) in the region and the specific crop coefficient (Kc) as calculated by
Chapagain et al. (as cited in Pfister et al., 2011) for cotton. Further, the irrigation water
requirement (IWR) is calculated by subtracting the effective precipitation (P e) in the region
from the CWR. This is finally used to calculate the ETirr i.e. the blue water consumption (BW)
for each crop in each country. Thus, the irrigation water consumption in agriculture depends
on the crop type, the climate of the region which determines the evapotranspiration rate and
on the precipitation in the region.

The irrigation efficiency factor EFirr depends on the type of irrigation techniques applied in the
specific country and is calculated as per FAO (1989, as cited in Nemecek et al., 2015).

Ginning

The seed cotton cultivated is separated into seeds and lint cotton in the ginning process. The
main input to this process is electricity and it has two valuable co-products - cotton seeds and
cotton lint/ fibers. The ratio of seed to fiber production is about 1.4 (Thinkstep and Cotton
Incorporated, 2016, p. 18). Thus, it can be estimated that 60% of the mass of the seed cotton
harvested goes to seeds and 40% to the cotton fibers. Further, based on the price of the seeds
and the fiber, 16% of the economic value of the harvested crop is in the seed and 84% in the
fiber which was used for economic allocation of products from the seed cotton cultivation
(ibid.). The ginning processes were assumed to take place in the same country as the seed
cotton cultivation based on consultation within IKEA. The ginning market processes specific
to the 5 countries in the scope were also obtained from the database by CONSULTANT
GROUP1 (2021).

Spinning

In the spinning process, the cotton fibers are twisted together to make a continuous strand of
yarns as the output. The main inputs in this process are electricity, water, and chemicals such
as coning oils, lubricants, and emulsifiers. Short fibers are produced as a by-product and
wastewater from the process is sent for treatment. An economic allocation was done for the
by-product and the main product in the dataset used. Spinning processes for China, India, and
Pakistan were obtained from CONSULTANT GROUP1 (2021). In the case of cotton fibers from
the US and Brazil, the spinning process was assumed to take place in China as it is the biggest
manufacturer of cotton yarn (Zauba.com, 2021). Transportation from these countries to China
of the ginned fiber was considered by ship and road by approximating the distances between
21
major cotton ginning regions in these countries and the major yarn spinning region in China.
The distance between the ginning mills in the US and Brazil and their ports was assumed to
be 200km. For calculating the shipping distances, the distance between the assumed ports was
calculated by using an online calculator tool (Ports.com, 2021). The distance between the port
and the spinning mills in China was assumed to be 480 miles based on Qiao, F. and Paggi, M.
S. (2009, p. 6). The exact calculations can be referred to in Appendix II. Tables 8-12 show the
datasets for modelling virgin cotton yarns.

Table 8. Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, India.

Process Input Amount Unit Source of
dataset
1. Cotton Seed cotton cultivation/IN U 2.5 Unit of CONSULTANT
cultivation mass GROUP1
(2021)
2. Fibre Ginning/IN U 1.1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production mass GROUP1
(2021)
3. Yarn Spinning/IN U 1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production. mass GROUP1
(2021)

Table 9. Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, China.

Process Input Amount Unit Source of
dataset
1. Cotton Seed cotton cultivation/CN U 2.5 Unit of CONSULTANT
cultivation mass GROUP1
(2021)
2. Fiber Ginning/CN U 1.1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production mass GROUP1
(2021)
3. Yarn Spinning/CN U 1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production. mass GROUP1
(2021)

Table 10. Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, Pakistan.
Process Input Amount Unit Source of
dataset
1. Cotton Seed cotton cultivation/PK U 2.5 Unit of CONSULTANT
cultivation mass GROUP1
(2021)
2. Fiber Ginning/PK U 1.1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production mass GROUP1
(2021)
3. Yarn Spinning/PK U 1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production. mass GROUP1
(2021)

Table 11. Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, US.
Process Input Amount Unit Source of
dataset
1. Cotton Seed cotton cultivation/US U 2.5 Unit of CONSULTANT
cultivation mass GROUP1
(2021)
22
 2. Fiber Ginning/US U 1.1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production mass GROUP1
(2021)
3. Yarn Spinning/CN for US U 1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production. mass GROUP1
(2021)
4. Transportatio Transport, freight, lorry 16-32 1066.8 Unit Ecoinvent 3.0
n (from US metric ton, EURO5 (mass)
fiber mill to {RER}|transport, freight, lorry km
16-32 metric ton, EURO5|
CN yarn mill).
Cut-off, U
Transport, freight, sea, 29125.6 Unit Ecoinvent 3.0
container ship {GLO}| market (mass)
for transport, freight, sea, km
container ship| Cut-off, U

Table 12. Datasets used for modelling virgin cotton yarns, Brazil.
Process Input Amount Unit Source of
dataset
1. Cotton Seed cotton cultivation/BR U 2.5 Unit of CONSULTANT
cultivation mass GROUP1
(2021)
2. Fiber Ginning/BR U 1.1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production mass GROUP1
(2021)
3. Yarn Spinning/CN for BR U 1 Unit of CONSULTANT
production. mass GROUP1
(2021)
4. Transportati Transport, freight, lorry 16-32 1066.8 Unit Ecoinvent 3.0
on (from BR metric ton, EURO5 (mass) km
fiber mill to {RER}|transport, freight,
lorry 16-32 metric ton,
CN yarn
EURO5| Cut-off, U
mill). Transport, freight, sea, 26931.4 Unit Ecoinvent 3.0
container ship {GLO}| market (mass) km
for transport, freight, sea,
container ship| Cut-off, U

5.2.2 Recycled and mixed cotton yarns

The cradle-to-gate life cycle of recycled cotton yarns is divided into the phases as seen in
section 5.1.2: raw material collection, fiber production and yarn production, see Figure 4 for
the flowchart of the process. This was modelled based on information received internally from
IKEA. The amounts of inputs and outputs were obtained from the suppliers in the form of
answers to a questionnaire (see Appendix I).

23
Figure 4. Cradle-to-gate life cycle of recycled cotton yarns (as per the recycling process in IKEA’s supply
chain).

Raw material collection and pre-processing

In recycled yarn production, the first step is the collection of post-consumer garments, which
comes from Europe and then is transported to the sorting facility. There, the initial process of
sorting involves separating textiles by colors and compositions and removing unnecessary
accessories such as buttons or zippers. The main inputs in this process are electricity and post-
consumer textiles. As outputs there are by-products in the form of textiles and accessories,
and the sorted garments that go to the cutting process, which takes place in the same location
as in the sorting process. Here, mass-based allocation is used for the by-products as price
information was not available for them.

Fiber production & yarn production

The process of cutting converts the segregated garments into small pieces. Then the fibers are
extracted in the shredding process, which takes place in the same location as spinning. Finally,
the spinning process consists of transforming fibers into yarns. There, several short fibers are
twisted at the same time to join them and produce a continuous strand. The inputs for
shredding and spinning are electricity and the textile inputs from cutting. In addition,
lubricant is needed in the spinning process. As outputs there are cotton yarns and by-products
(short fibers) from the processes of shredding and spinning. Again, mass-based allocation is
used for the by-products as price information was not available for them.

The processes for recycled cotton yarns were modelled based on primary data collected from
IKEA suppliers. This can be seen in Table 13 below. Only renewable electricity was used in the
recycling processes in Country x for which a new electricity mix called “Renewable Share
Country x- Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| market for | Cut-off, U” was modelled.

Table 13. Datasets used for modelling recycled cotton yarns, Country x.
Process Input Amount Unit Source of dataset
1. Raw Renewable Share 0.08 kWh Ecoinvent 3.0
material Country x- Electricity,
collection high voltage {Country
x}| market for | Cut-
off, U
24
 and pre-
processing
2. Fiber and Sorted garments 1.00 Unit of mass Created by
Yarn authors
production Lubricating oil 1.37 Unit of mass Ecoinvent 3.0
{RoW}| market for
lubricating oil| Cut-
off, U
Renewable Share 2.68 kWh Ecoinvent 3.0
Country x- Electricity,
high voltage {Country
x}| market for | Cut-
off, U
3. Transportat Textiles from Europe 63724.0 Unit (mass) Ecoinvent 3.0
ion to sorting facility: 0 km
Transport, freight,
lorry 3.5-7.5 metric
ton, euro3 {RER}
market for transport,
freight, lorry 3.5-7.5
metric ton, EURO3|
Cut-off U
Sorted garments from 236305.5 Unit (mass) Ecoinvent 3.0
city 1 to city 2 yarn 0 km
mill:
Transport, freight,
lorry 3.5-7.5 metric
ton, euro3 {RER}
market for transport,
freight, lorry 3.5-7.5
metric ton, EURO3|
Cut-off U
4. Waste Sorted garments 0.71 Unit of mass Ecoinvent 3.0
waste, sent to
recycling.
Sorted accessories 0.32 Unit of mass Ecoinvent 3.0
waste, sent to
recycling.
Spun yarn waste, sent 0.11 Unit of mass Ecoinvent 3.0
to recycling.

The process “Renewable Share Country x- Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| market for |
Cut-off, U” was created from the Ecoinvent dataset “Electricity, high voltage {Country x}|
market for | Cut-off, U” by removing the fossil-based electricity inputs into the mix so that the
resulting mix only reflected the share of renewable energy sources in Country x. This can be
seen in Table 14.

Table 14. Datasets used for modelling renewable energy share, Country x.
Process Input Amount Unit Source of
dataset
Renewable Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 1.40E-02 kWh Ecoinvent
Share electricity production, hydro, pumped 3.0
Country x- storage | Cut-off, U

25
Electricity, Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 4.88E-02 kWh Ecoinvent
high voltage electricity production, hydro, reservoir, 3.0
{Country x}| non-alpine region | Cut-off, U
market for | Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 9.47E-02 kWh Ecoinvent
Cut-off, U electricity production, hydro, run-of-river 3.0
| Cut-off, U
Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 1.98E-02 kWh Ecoinvent
electricity production, solar thermal 3.0
parabolic trough, 50 MW | Cut-off, U
Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 4.46E-04 kWh Ecoinvent
electricity production, solar tower power 3.0
plant, 20 MW | Cut-off, U
Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 6.98E-02 kWh Ecoinvent
electricity production, wind, <1MW 3.0
turbine, onshore | Cut-off, U
Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 3.37E-04 kWh Ecoinvent
electricity production, wind, >3MW 3.0
turbine, onshore | Cut-off, U
Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 3.83E-05 kWh Ecoinvent
electricity production, wind, 1-3MW 3.0
turbine, offshore | Cut-off, U
Electricity, high voltage {Country x}| 1.27E-01 kWh Ecoinvent
electricity production, wind, 1-3MW 3.0
turbine, onshore | Cut-off, U

Mixed (recycled - virgin) cotton yarns

Finally, an assembly for mixed yarns was created using the sub-assemblies for virgin yarns
from different countries and recycled yarns as modelled for Country x as seen in tables 15 and
16.

Table 15. Sub-assemblies used for modelling mixed cotton yarns, 50% recycled 50% virgin, China.
Process Input Amount Unit Source of
dataset
1. Mixed yarn share Cotton yarns CN 0.50 p Created by
50/50 authors
Recycled spun 0.50 p Created by
yarn authors

Table 16. Sub-assemblies used for modelling mixed cotton yarns, 25% recycled 75% virgin, China.
Process Input Amount Unit Source of
dataset
1. Mixed yarn share Cotton yarns CN 0.75 p Created by
75/25 authors
Recycled spun 0.25 p Created by
yarn authors

5.2.3 Better Cotton virgin yarns

The Better Cotton Initiative reports yearly farmer results on its website. These provide an
overview of the field-level environmental, social, and economic performance of BCI farmers
compared to non-BCI farmers in the same geographic area (called ‘Comparison farmers’)
through a set of indicators. The environmental indicators reported for FY18-19 in six of the
countries that BCI works in can be seen in Table 17. (Better Cotton Initiative, 2021d).

26
Table 17. Environmental and economic indicators reported by BCI for FY18-19 (Better Cotton Initiative,
2021d).
Country China Pakistan India Turkey Tajikistan Mali

Indicators (% reductions/increase compared to Comparison farmers)

1. Water use for irrigation
(m3/ha) -10% -15% -13% 0% -6% rainfed
2. Pesticide use (kg/ha) -14% -18% -10% 2% -38% -31%
3. Biopesticide (yes/no)
BCI farmers use biopesticide
more often than non-BCI
farmers - - 6% - 8% -
4. Organic fertilizer (yes/no) 10% 3% 8% 2% -2% 7%
5. Synthetic fertilizer (kg/ha) -18% -15% -15% -2% 3% 6%
6. Yield (lint mt/ha) 8% 11% 11% 6% 5% 4%

Absolute data on these environmental indicators was not available and neither was the data
for the comparison farmers. Thus, in order to model the inventory for BCI cotton using this
information, country level processes for conventional seed-cotton cultivation were used from
the databases by CONSULTANT GROUP1 (2021) as the baseline - as a proxy for the data of
the comparison farmers. Next, using the percentage reduction or increase in water use, and
yield (from Table 17), these baseline processes were modified to reflect the corresponding
changes in inputs from nature and technosphere, and emissions to the environment. This was
only possible for inventory flows of water as modelling the other emission flows based on the
limited BCI data was not possible.

For BCI cotton, first the output amount of seed cotton from the original cultivation processes
was increased to reflect the increase in yields (lint mt/ha) for the same amount of area under
cultivation. As BCI reports an increase in lint cotton yields and not seed cotton yields, it was
assumed that the same percentage applies to seed cotton yields as the lint weight is directly
proportional to the seed cotton weight. Next, the water withdrawn for irrigation (I withdrawal as
seen in section 5.2.1) was modified by the percentage reductions for water use (m 3/ha) in the
cultivation processes. As this was modelled in the inventory dataset as an input process from
the technosphere including the energy use and infrastructure for irrigation, reducing the input
flow also reduced the associated energy used for irrigation.

5.3 Life Cycle Impact assessment

This section will present the results and analysis of the life cycle impact assessment for the
functional units and cases as described in the goal and scope.

5.3.1 Conventional virgin cotton yarns vs. mixed cotton yarns

In this section, the characterization results for conventional cotton virgin yarns, mixed yarns
75/25 (75% virgin yarns plus 25% recycled yarns) and mixed yarns 50/50 (50% virgin yarns
plus 50% recycled yarns) are compared for China since it is IKEA’s biggest cotton sourcing
country (IKEA, 2020b). The analysis for the other countries can be consulted on the appendix
III.

27
Figure 5. Comparative results for the impacts of 100% virgin yarns, mixed yarns 75/25 (75% virgin plus
25% recycled), mixed yarns 50/50 (50% virgin plus 50% recycled).

Figure 6. Split of the impacts by life cycle stages of the recycled yarns.

As seen on Figure 5, an average impact reduction of 25% is achieved when using a mix of 75%
virgin cotton and 25% recycled cotton. An average reduction of 50% is achieved when using a
mix of 50% virgin cotton and 50% recycled cotton. This is due to the fact that the impacts of
recycled cotton yarns are almost negligible compared to the virgin cotton yarns in all impact
categories. Moreover, the impacts of recycled yarns are low compared to virgin since
renewable energy is used in all processes considered in the study. Furthermore, the inputs
from nature and technosphere, including water, are also few compared to virgin yarns.
Therefore, there is almost a proportional reduction in impacts as the percentage of recycled
cotton is increased.

As seen in Figure 6, the main hotspots of recycled yarns (100% share) are transport from the
sorting to spinning process and the stage of shredding and spinning. The first has the highest
contribution to almost all impact categories considered, except for water availability. Water
availability impacts are mostly coming from Hydropower electricity production, specifically
from the water used in turbines. Water consumed in Hydropower electricity production comes
mostly from the operational stage, since the generation requires a vast storage of reservoir,
28
which results in a loss of water due to evaporation (Energy Information Administration, 2016
in Lee et al., 2018). However, contrary to reservoir Hydropower, run-of-river Hydropower
consumes a relatively small amount of water (Jin et al., 2019).

For the category of climate change the main contribution comes from the carbon dioxide
emissions emitted by the diesel fuel used in transportation. Similarly for acidification, the
main contribution comes from the emissions by diesel fuel used in transportation. As for
toxicity impacts, the hotspots are found in the transport from the sorting to spinning process
due to truck production and in the shredding and spinning due to wind power production. In
the case of ecotoxicity, the specific process contribution is from sulfidic tailings from copper
mine operation, for human toxicity- cancer from slag unalloyed electric arc furnace steel and
cast-iron production for human toxicity- non-cancer. Regarding eutrophication impact
categories, the contribution comes mostly from the electricity required for truck production,
truck maintenance, road construction and maintenance, and the main process contribution is
spoil from hard coal mining.

5.3.2 Conventional virgin yarns across regions

In this section, the characterization results for conventional cotton cultivation are compared
for the 5 countries defined in the scope. For confidentiality reasons, only the percentage
comparisons are shown taking the impacts of China as 100% and scaling the results for other
countries with respect to it. The hotspots are analyzed for China (IKEA’s biggest cotton
sourcing country) and the country showing the highest impact for the particular impact
category.

Water consumption and water scarcity footprint

Figure 7. Country-wise comparative results for water consumption of conventional virgin yarns (ReCiPe
Midpoint (H) 2016 method).

29
Figure 8. Country-wise comparative results for water scarcity footprint of conventional virgin yarns
(AWARE method).

As seen in Figure 7, cotton yarn production in Pakistan and India shows the highest water
consumption while that in Brazil shows the lowest water consumption. However, as seen in
Figure 8, the highest water scarcity footprint is seen in Pakistan, much higher than in India.
Thus, the water consumption and scarcity footprint indicators show a different trend with
respect to the impacts in the different countries. However, it must be noted that country-
average AWARE characterization factors were used in the impact assessment as available in
SimaPro, but it may be necessary to use characterization factors based on the regions of cotton
cultivation within the countries to better assess the scarcity footprint.

Figure 9. Split of water consumption of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in China and
Pakistan.

As can be seen from Figure 9, seed cotton cultivation is the main hotspot for water
consumption in both China and Pakistan. Here, water consumption comes mainly from the
irrigation water requirement. As seen in section 5.2.1, regions with a high reference
evapotranspiration (ETo) and crop coefficient (Kc) and relatively low precipitation (Pe), will

30
show a higher irrigation water requirement (IWR), and thus a higher water consumption. This
is the case for cotton cultivation in countries like India and Pakistan.

Freshwater eutrophication

Figure 10. Country-wise comparative results for freshwater eutrophication of conventional virgin yarns
(ReCiPe Midpoint (H) 2016 method).

Figure 11. Split of freshwater eutrophication impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in
China and India.

As can be seen from Figure 10, cotton yarns production India shows the highest potential
impact for freshwater eutrophication, followed by Pakistan and China. From Figure 11, it can
be seen that the main stages contributing to this impact are seed cotton cultivation and
spinning (~73% and ~26% respectively in India and ~68% and ~30% respectively in China).
For both the countries, within seed cotton cultivation, the impact comes from the direct field
emissions of phosphate and the production of coal-based electricity used for irrigation. Within
spinning, the impact can again be attributed to the use of coal-based electricity. Phosphate
emissions arise due to the surface landfilling of spoil from hard coal and lignite mining.

31
Phosphate emissions from the field are modelled in the inventory based on the type and
amount of input phosphorus fertilizers, the type of land use, and the soil erosion rate
(Nemecek et al., 2015, pp. 49-52). On analyzing the inventory flow of input phosphorus
fertilizer amounts, it was observed that the per unit of seed cotton cultivated, the input
amounts were not significantly different for the countries under consideration. However, the
phosphorus and phosphate field emissions to river and groundwater per unit of seed cotton
cultivated were much higher for India compared to other countries. Thus, it can be concluded
that the cultivation practices, runoff, leaching, and soil erosion factors dominate in leading to
a high freshwater eutrophication in India.

Scherer and Pfister (2015) have modelled spatially explicit impacts from agricultural
phosphorus emissions for 169 crops at a country level. For seed cotton cultivation, their
estimated P loss is also much higher for India compared to the four countries considered here.
For maize, rice, soybean, and wheat, they found that soil erosion is the dominant cause in the
tropics, while groundwater leaching is more dominant in the temperate climate zone. Thus,
soil erosion could also be a leading factor for phosphorus emissions from seed cotton
cultivation in India. However, a more regionalized analysis focusing on cotton growing regions
within the country would be needed to draw accurate conclusions.

Marine eutrophication

Figure 12. Country-wise comparative results for marine eutrophication impact of conventional virgin
yarns (ReCiPe Midpoint (H) 2016 method).

32
Figure 13. Split of marine eutrophication impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in China
and India.

As can be seen from Figure 12, cotton yarns production in India shows the highest potential
impact for marine eutrophication, followed by Pakistan and the US. From Figure 13, it can be
seen that the main stage contributing to this impact is seed cotton cultivation (~98% in India
and ~95% in China). For both the countries, within seed cotton cultivation, the impact comes
from the direct field emissions of nitrate to groundwater.

Nitrate leaching to groundwater is modelled in the inventory for seed cotton cultivation based
on the SQCB-NO3 model (Faist Emmenegger et al., 2009) for non-European countries
(Nemecek et al., 2015, p. 46). In this model, the amount of nitrate leached is proportional to
the amount of nitrogen supplied through fertilizers, the nitrogen in organic matter, and the
precipitation and irrigation amount. It is inversely related to the soil clay content, the rooting
depth, and the nitrogen uptake by the crop. On analyzing the inventory flow of input nitrogen
fertilizer amounts, it was observed that the per unit of seed cotton cultivated, the input
amounts were not significantly different for the countries under consideration. Thus, the
significantly higher impact for India compared to China, could be attributed to the remaining
factors causing nitrate leaching.

33
Aquatic acidification

Figure 14. Country-wise comparative results for aquatic acidification of conventional virgin yarns
(IMPACT 2002+ method).

Figure 15. Split of aquatic acidification impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in China
and India.

As seen in Figure 14, cotton yarns production in India shows a higher impact in aquatic
acidification compared to the other countries. In India, about 60% of the impact comes from
the seed cotton cultivation stage while about 38% impact comes from the spinning stage (see
Figure 15). Within seed cotton cultivation, the main causes of this impact are the direct
emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonia (NH3) from the field (~23%) and the use of
electricity for irrigation (~20%). Within spinning, almost all of the impact is due to electricity
use. Electricity production in India being majorly coal-based, involves the emissions of
nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide which lead to the acidification impact.

In China, about 48% of the impact comes from the seed cotton cultivation stage and about
50% from the spinning stage (see Figure 15). Within seed cotton cultivation, the main causes
of this impact are the direct emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO x) and ammonia (NH3) from the
field (~28%) and the use of electricity for irrigation (~7%). Within spinning, coal-based
electricity use is the main cause of the impact in China as well. The comparatively higher
impact for India than China can be attributed to the higher water use and thus higher
34
electricity use for irrigation. Additionally, on comparing the inventory flows, it was found that
India has higher rates of nitrogen fertilizer application and higher rates of ammonia and
nitrogen oxide emissions from the field per unit of seed cotton cultivated compared to China.
The electricity consumption for spinning is also higher in India along with the acidification
impact per unit of electricity produced compared to China. All these factors lead to differences
seen in the impacts in Figure 14.

Freshwater ecotoxicity

Figure 16. Country-wise comparative results for freshwater ecotoxicity impact of conventional virgin
yarns (USEtox 2.0 method).

Figure 17. Split of freshwater ecotoxicity impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in China
and India.

As observed in Figure 16, India is the country showing the highest impact in the category of
freshwater ecotoxicity. The main stages contributing to this impact are cotton cultivation
(~70%) and spinning (~28%) as seen on Figure 17. Whereof, in spinning, electricity use is the
main cause due to fossil-based energy -and the specific process contribution of residual
material landfill of hard coal ash, treatment of scrap copper, and the water emissions of
aluminum and copper. As for cotton cultivation, the main process can be attributed to the
35
electricity required for irrigation -specifically from treatment of sulfidic tailings, treatment of
residuals of hard coal ash. In addition, a small percentage (around 8%) is attributed to the use
of fertilizers.

In the case of China, the main stages contributing to this impact category are cotton cultivation
(29.5%) and spinning (67.4%). Whereof, electricity use is the main contributor in both stages,
with the specific processes of treatment of sulfidic tailings, treatment of residuals of hard coal
ash, treatment of scrap copper, and the water emissions of copper and aluminum. A small
percentage of the impacts can be attributed to fertilizers in the case of the cotton cultivation
stage. The share for the cotton cultivation stage is observed to be lower compared to India, a
possible explanation would be that since more water for irrigation is required therefore more
electricity is needed for that process.

Human toxicity, cancer

Figure 18. Country-wise comparative results for human toxicity, cancer impact of conventional virgin
yarns (USEtox 2.0 method).

36
Figure 19. Split of human toxicity, cancer impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in
China and India.

India is the country showing the highest impact in this impact category as seen on Figure 18.
The main stages contributing to this are spinning (46.6%) and cotton cultivation (50%) as seen
on Figure 19. Whereof, in spinning, electricity use is the main cause due to fossil-based energy
-and the specific process contribution of spoil from hard coal mining, spoil from lignite
mining, hard coal ash treatment and the water emissions of Chromium and Nickel. As for
cotton cultivation, the main contribution can be attributed to the electricity required for
irrigation, and the production of agricultural machinery. The specific processes contributing
are treatment of furnace waste, spoil from hard coal mining, and the water emissions of
Chromium and Nickel.

In the case of China, the main stages contributing to this impact are also spinning (61.3%) and
cotton cultivation (31.1%) as seen on Figure 19. Similar as in India, in spinning, the highest
processes contributing come from electricity use, specifically treatment of hard coal ash, spoil
from hard coal mining, coal slurry, and the water emissions of Chromium and Nickel. For
cotton cultivation the main contribution can be attributed to the electricity required for
irrigation, and the production of agricultural machinery. The specific processes contributing
are treatment of furnace waste, spoil from hard coal mining, and the water emissions of
Chromium and Nickel. Once again, the differences between the stages that contribute to the
impact in both countries can be explained with the argument that more electricity for
irrigation is required in India compared to China.

Human toxicity, non-cancer

Figure 20. Country-wise comparative results for human toxicity, non-cancer impact of conventional
virgin yarns (USEtox 2.0 method).

37
Figure 21. Split of human toxicity, non-cancer impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in
China and India.

India is also the country showing the highest impact in the human toxicity non-cancer impact,
as seen on Figure 20. The main stages contributing to this impact are spinning (38.2%) and
seed cotton cultivation (60.1%) as seen on Figure 21. Like the case of the other toxicity impacts,
the main contribution in spinning comes from the use of electricity with the specific processes
of treatment of hard coal ash, spoil from hard coal mining and the water emissions of Arsenic
and Zinc and the air emissions of Mercury. In cotton cultivation the contribution comes from
electricity use in irrigation and the production of agricultural machinery, as it is the case of
human toxicity- cancer. The specific processes contributing are treatment of hard coal ash,
spoil from hard coal mining, and the water emissions of Zinc and Arsenic, the soil emissions
of Zinc, and the air emissions of Mercury.

In China, the main stages contributing to the impact are spinning (85.7%) and cotton
cultivation (8.9%) as seen on Figure 21. Whereof in spinning, the main contribution comes
from electricity use and the specific processes of treatment of hard coal ash, spoil from hard
coal mining, and the water emissions of Arsenic and Zinc, and the air emissions of Mercury
and Lead. In cotton cultivation the contribution comes from electricity use in irrigation,
production of agricultural machinery, and the use of fertilizers. The specific processes
contributing are treatment of sulfidic tailings, treatment of hard coal ash, application of plant
protection products, fertilizing by broadcasters. And the water emissions of Arsenic, Zinc,
Mercury, Cadmium, Barium; air emissions of Mercury, Zinc, Cadmium, Arsenic; and soil
emissions of Cadmium, Zinc, Mercury, and Lead.

38
Climate change

Figure 22. Country-wise comparative results for climate change impact of conventional virgin yarns
(IPCC GWP100a method).

Figure 23. Split of climate change impact of conventional virgin yarns by life cycle stages in China and
India

As can be observed from Figure 22, India is the country with the highest climate impact
followed by the US and China. From Figure 23, it can be seen that the main stages contributing
to this impact are seed cotton cultivation and spinning (~53% and ~46% respectively in India
and ~31% and ~67% respectively in China). Within seed cotton cultivation, the direct field
emissions of N2O, the coal-based electricity use and diesel use for irrigation pumps, and the
land use change are the main contributors in India. While in China, the direct field emissions
of N2O and fossil-based electricity use for irrigation are the main contributors. The impact
from the spinning stage comes mainly from the fossil-based electricity used in the process.

The relatively much higher impact in India can be attributed to the higher irrigation
requirement and the associated electricity use, the land use change impact, higher electricity
use in spinning and the higher carbon intensity of the electricity used. Regarding higher
irrigation requirements, it was observed that it was ~ 23% of the total climate change impact
39
for India, while it was ~ 9% for China. In the spinning stage it was observed that the electricity
use did not vary significantly between the two countries, as it was 24.9 units for India and 19.9
units for China. However, the impacts were almost twice as much for India compared to China.
This finding can be explained by analyzing the carbon intensity of electricity production in
each country, which was ~1.4 times more CO2 eq./unit electricity in India compared to China.

5.3.3 Conventional vs. BCI virgin cotton yarns

Applying the water reductions and yield increases stated by BCI (Table 17) results in a 16%
reduction in water consumption in China, while it is 21% in India and 23% in Pakistan, as
observed in Figure 24. However, it is relevant to note that these results do not totally represent
Better Cotton, as reductions in other inputs -such as fertilizers and pesticides, are not
considered. Thus, water impacts related to such inputs are not reduced.

Figure 24. Water consumption per unit BCI yarns compared to conventional virgin yarns in China,
India, and Pakistan.

5.4 Uncertainties
Two types of uncertainties - data uncertainties and model uncertainties (representativeness
and incompleteness) can be discussed in life cycle models (PRe-sustainability, 2016). This
section qualitatively discusses the main sources of these uncertainties in this study as well as
uncertainties related to the impact assessment methods.

5.4.1 Data uncertainties

Data uncertainties arise due to the variation in data measured or calculated in the life cycle
inventory. The datasets used for virgin conventional cotton cultivation were of robust data
quality. However, as they were modelled at a country aggregate level, inventory flows such as
water used for irrigation which are expected to vary spatially and temporally within a country
showed high standard deviations. Additionally, as the water consumption was modelled based
on secondary data from Pfister et al. (2011), the data may not be up-to-date and may not reflect
current levels of water consumption for cotton cultivation. However, this is one of best
available estimates for crop specific water consumption in irrigation that is regionalized at a
country level. As more recent data becomes available, the study results must be updated. For
Better Cotton, the uncertainties arise due to the assumption that the data from CONSULTANT
40
GROUP1 (2021) for conventional cotton cultivation is the baseline data for the ‘Comparison
farmers’ to which changes are made to reflect the water consumption impacts for Better
Cotton. In the case of the recycled cotton processes, the data uncertainties are expected to be
low as primary data was collected from suppliers.

5.4.2 Model uncertainties

For virgin conventional cotton and Better Cotton, assumptions had to be made about the
location of the spinning processes as data about this was not available. The choice of modelling
spinning in the same country for cotton fibers from China, India, and Pakistan, and that of
modelling spinning in China for cotton fibers from the US and Brazil may affect the results for
the impact categories for which spinning was a hotspot. This is because the impacts due to the
spinning process mainly depend on the type of electricity used and the electricity grid mix
varies across the countries considered as seen in section 5.3.2. Thus, if the spinning process
were to happen in India instead of China, the impacts could increase for the yarns made from
cotton from the US and Brazil as well.

For recycled yarns, one of the main modelling choices was the cut-off allocation method for
the first life of the collected garments that are recycled. This resulted in no allocation of
impacts from raw material production (virgin cotton cultivation of the material in the recycled
garments) to the recycled cotton yarns. As seen from the results, the impacts from the recycling
processes themselves are negligible compared to the virgin cotton yarn processes. Thus, the
cut-off method incentivizes the use of recycled materials in manufacturing as the garments
collected to be recycled arrive burden-free in their second life cycle. Since this is a case of open
loop recycling and details about the first life of the collected garments were not available, it
was not possible to apply any other allocation method.

If a 50/50 allocated method were to be used, half of the impacts from the raw material
production in the first life of the garments would be allocated to the recycled yarns, while half
of the impacts from the recycling processes would be allocated to the disposal stage of the first
life of the garments. This could lead to significantly higher impacts for the recycled yarns and
reduce the impacts assessed for the first life of the garments. Thus, it could create an incentive
to recycle garments for the party assessing the impacts of the first life of the garment. In case
IKEA moves towards recycling its own cotton products in the future, this method could help
them to show a fair and meaningful partitioning of burdens over the two life cycles of the
products.

5.4.3 Impact assessment uncertainties

For the impact assessment related to water use, it is possible to use different scarcity equations
(based on consumption-to-availability (CTA), demand-to-availability (DTA), etc.) for the
calculation of the water scarcity footprint as seen in section 3.3, which may show different
results. As the AWARE method is the consensus-based method recommended by the UNEP
Life Cycle Initiative, it was chosen in the impact assessment. However, methods based on CTA
ratio such as the one by Hoekstra et al., (2012) can also be used. In the sensitivity analysis, the
results from these two methods are compared.

For toxicity impacts, the USEtox 2.0 method was used for impact assessment. On doing an
inventory flow check, it was found that some of the pesticides emissions to soil modelled in
the inventory for seed cotton cultivation did not have characterization factors in the method
and were thus not included in the impact assessment. These flows to the soil were ‘pesticides,
unspecified’, ‘thiamethoxam’, and ‘metolachlor’. The other pesticides modelled in the
processes did have characterization factors in the USEtox 2.0 method. Thus, there is some
uncertainty in the toxicity impact results due to the limitations of the impact assessment
method.
41
5.5 Scenario analysis

5.5.1 Renewable energy in spinning for conventional virgin cotton yarns

in China and India
This scenario was modelled for analyzing the impacts of switching to renewable energy in the
spinning process of virgin cotton in the countries of China and India. The results are shown in
Figures 21 and 22.

Figure 25. Comparison of renewable and conventional energy in spinning for conventional virgin yarns,
China.

Figure 26. Comparison of renewable and conventional energy in spinning for conventional virgin yarns,
India.

42
As observed in Figure 25, in the case of China, there was a decrease in all impact categories by
changing to renewable energy in the spinning process. Significant reductions are observed for
water quality impacts such as freshwater ecotoxicity, human toxicity and freshwater
eutrophication, apart from climate change. In the case of India, as seen on Figure 26, there is
a decrease in the same water quality impacts as China, although to a lesser extent compared
to China. This is because the electricity required in the cotton cultivation stage in India has a
higher contribution compared to spinning. For example, in the freshwater ecotoxicity impact
category, as seen on section 5.3.2, cotton cultivation contributes to nearly 70%, while spinning
28%. The same pattern can be observed for the rest of the water quality impacts. Regarding
water availability, it can be observed in Figure 26 that there is a slight increase in water
consumption, this is due to the hydropower electricity production.

5.5.2 Recycled cotton yarns in China

The following scenario was modelled to analyze potential changes in the different impact
categories when using conventional energy from China for recycled cotton. This process was
modelled based on the inputs and outputs as in the Country x recycled process, but with the
Chinese electricity grid. Figure 27 shows the comparison between conventional cotton from
China (named “China virgin yarn 100/0”), a mix of 50% virgin cotton from China and 50%
recycled cotton with conventional energy from China (named “China mixed yarn 50/50”), and
a mix of 50% virgin cotton from China and 50% recycled cotton from Country x (using
renewable energy) (named “China-Country x mixed yarn 50/50”).

Figure 27. Comparative results for the impacts of “China virgin yarn 100/0”, “China mixed yarn
50/50” and “China-Country x mixed yarn 50/50”.

As it can be observed, there is a slight difference between the reductions of impacts, compared
to 100% virgin yarn, by changing from renewable energy in Country x to conventional energy
in China, mostly in the categories related to water quality -such as toxicity, and climate change.
Once more, such differences can be explained with the relation between electricity use and
those impacts, as explained on section 5.3.2. However, the impacts of the “China mixed yarn
50/50” using the conventional Chinese electricity mix, are still low compared to the “China
virgin yarn 100/0”. Thus, recycling can be seen to be beneficial even if the process were to take
place in China assuming that a similar process as in Country x is adopted.
43
5.6 Sensitivity analysis

5.6.1 Analyzing water scarcity with the method by Hoekstra et al. (2012)
The AWARE method was selected to assess the water scarcity impact in this study, however
there are different methods to analyze this impact, as explained previously. Thus, for
performing a sensitivity analysis, an additional water availability impact was analyzed
according to the method by Hoekstra et al. (2012). As can be observed in Figure 28 when
performing a country-wise comparison, differences between each method can be observed, as
the cases of Pakistan and India. Such differences might come from the way each method
assesses scarcity.

Figure 28. Water use impacts by AWARE and Hoekstra et al., 2012 methods across countries.

While the method by Hoekstra et al. (2012) provides a water stress index based on the water
consumption-to-availability (CTA) ratio in the region, the AWARE method by Boulay et al.
(2018) has a characterization factor that is based on the ratio of world average water
‘availability minus demand’ (AMD) and the AMD in the in the region as seen in section 3.3. It
was observed from the LCIA methods in SimaPro, that the characterization factors for India
and Pakistan were almost the same as per Hoekstra et al. (2012) but as per the AWARE
method, the characterization factor was almost twice as much for Pakistan than for India. The
water scarcity factors by Hoekstra et al. (2012) were developed based on the period of 1996-
2005. The AWARE factors were developed using water availability amounts which were
modelled based on data from the period 1960-2010, and human water demand amounts
modelled for the year 2010 (Boulay et al., 2018). The ecosystem water requirements (EWR)
are considered in the method by Hoekstra et al. by subtracting the presumed flow requirement
for ecological health from the total runoff in the region to estimate the water available
(Hoekstra et al., 2012). They consider the EWR to be 20% of the natural water flow in the
region (ibid.). The EWR are considered in the AWARE method as ‘ecosystem demand’ which
is subtracted from the amount of water available (Boulay et al., 2018). Here, the EWR is
considered to be 30-60% of the pristine flow based on the seasonal flow patterns (ibid.). These
differences in the way the water scarcity is calculated by the two methods could explain the
significant differences in the results for India and Pakistan.

44
6. Assessing IKEA’s future water consumption
In this section, 2 future scenarios for the water consumption of the total cotton yarn volumes
used in IKEA are created. In 2019, IKEA reported using 142,600 million tons of lint cotton
(IKEA, 2019, p. 50). In 2020, a 14% growth in business from FY16 to FY20 was reported (Ingka
Group, 2020, p. 72). This implies an annual year on year growth rate of 2.6%. Assuming this
growth rate until 2030, the total cotton volumes used by IKEA can be estimated to increase at
the same rate. Further, it is assumed that the percentage of post-consumer recycled cotton in
the total volume increases in 2 scenarios -
1. Scenario 1: 10% in FY25 and 20% in FY30
2. Scenario 2: 20% in FY25 and 40% in FY30
The business-as-usual (BAU) case assumes that the percentage of post-consumer recycled
cotton remains at the same level as in 2019.

For the sake of the scenario analysis, all the virgin cotton is assumed to be from the Better
Cotton Initiative, and the top 6 sourcing countries with their share of the total cotton volumes
sourced are considered - China (29%), Brazil (16%), India (16%), Pakistan (16%), US (7%), and
Australia (6%) (IKEA, 2019, p. 50). The remaining 9% of the total cotton is split equally
between these 6 countries as an approximation. For the sourcing countries for which BCI does
not report reductions in water use and improvements in yield, an average value of 9% decrease
in water use and 8% increase in yields is assumed based on the countries for which BCI reports
these numbers (from Table 17).

Fig. 29 Percentage change in water consumption from cotton yarns for IKEA in FY25 and FY30 in future
scenarios.

Increasing the percentage of recycled yarns proportionally reduces the water consumption
compared to BAU as seen in Figure 29. However, with respect to the baseline year of FY19, in
scenario 1, a 6% increase can be seen in FY25 and a 7% increase in FY30. In scenario 2, there
is a decrease of 6% in water consumption in FY25 and a decrease of 19% in FY30. Thus, using
recycled cotton can contribute to fulfilling IKEA’s long-term ambition of becoming ‘Water
Positive’ (IKEA, 2020, p. 57). However, to completely decouple the growth of business and
water consumption, many more actions will be needed other than using recycled cotton yarns
as can be inferred from the above scenarios.

45
7. Discussion and recommendations

7.1 Sustainability actions

As seen in section 5.3.1, recycled cotton yarns have negligible potential environmental impacts
compared to virgin cotton yarns, resulting in significant reductions in impacts even when
mixed with virgin cotton yarns. Therefore, from IKEA’s perspective, rapidly increasing the
sourcing of recycled cotton and setting up the required infrastructure and support for
suppliers could be a priority. However, it should be noted that a cut-off allocation approach is
used in this study which can lead to underestimation of the impacts from recycled cotton.
Please refer to section 5.4.2 for discussion related to the effects of the choice of allocation
methods.

For virgin cotton, as seen in section 5.3.2, the main hotspot of water availability impacts is the
irrigation water requirement in seed cotton cultivation. Better water management practices
such as those adopted by BCI show significant reductions in water consumption as seen in
section 5.3.3. However, many sourcing countries of IKEA show high water stress levels.
Focusing efforts on countries like Pakistan and India that already show high water stress,
should be a priority. A more regional analysis may be necessary for IKEA to decide upon
specific actions to be taken in these regions along with their implementation partners. Possible
options could be shifting sourcing to more rainfed areas, shifting to organic cotton, etc.
However, the trade-offs with other impact categories must be analyzed for such possibilities.

Water quality impacts (freshwater eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity, and human toxicity)
and the climate change impact have a common hotspot in the use of fossil-based electricity in
spinning considering the cradle-to-gate scope of the study. As seen in the scenario analysis in
section 5.5.1, shifting to renewable energy for spinning alone can lead to sizable reductions in
these impacts. Thus, IKEA’s focus should be on supporting its yarn suppliers to shift towards
renewable electricity use in their operations. As recently announced by IKEA, they plan to
support around 1600 suppliers to shift to 100% renewable energy starting from those in India,
China, and Poland followed by a global roll-out as part of their efforts to reduce their climate
footprint (The Hindu Business Line, 2021). Including cotton yarn spinners in these or in their
next actions should be considered.

As seen in section 5.3.2, energy used for irrigation water withdrawal is also a major contributor
to climate change and water quality impacts in regions where irrigation water requirement is
high. Thus, reducing water withdrawal can help to also reduce the energy used for pumping
irrigation water and thereby lead to reductions in other impact categories. Again, reduced
water use by BCI is a step in the right direction. However, other solutions such as shifting to
renewable electric pumps for irrigation can also be explored. One such success story is the use
of solar water pumps in Karnataka, India. To avoid overexploitation of water for irrigation
with free solar energy, a buy back policy for excess electricity generated by the farmers has
been implemented, thereby incentivizing them to irrigate their fields efficiently (Rockström et
al., 2017).

7.2 Data collection and inventory modelling

As seen in the limitations for the inventory modelling, primary data was not available during
the course of the study for the production of virgin cotton yarns for conventional as well as
Better Cotton. For impacts such as water availability and quality which are region-dependent,
getting access to such data becomes crucial to ensure better results. IKEA can focus on
accessing the following data critically -

46
1. Data about the sourcing regions for virgin cotton at a regional scale other than the country-
level. Data about the locations of the cotton cultivation areas, the ginners, spinners,
weavers, and fabric manufacturers can help to carry out a more detailed study. Further,
data about the transportation (distance and type) of intermediate products from farm to
ginning to spinning would be good to collect.

2. Primary data from sustainable agriculture certification schemes such as BCI and the e3
program from which IKEA currently sources cotton or any schemes that they may partner
with in the future. The data collected must include the absolute baseline data and the
percentage reductions for the environmental parameters. Further, the granularity of the
data reported should increase to better estimate the different impacts. For example, BCI
reports a total decrease in the percentage of synthetic fertilizers used but data about the
share of different types of fertilizers used is not available. It also reports an increase in the
percentage of farmers using organic fertilizers but data about the different types and
amounts of organic fertilizers used by the farmers is not available (as seen in section 5.2.3).
Similarly, data about types and amounts of pesticides and biopesticides used, the type of
crop management practices, etc. also need to be reported in order to model an inventory
for Better Cotton cultivation.

For understanding the necessary level of detail to model the inventory and do a comparative
LCA of the impacts from different practices of seed cotton cultivation, one can refer to the
questionnaire in the study by Singh et al. (2018, pp. 75-76) comparing conventional, organic,
and Better Cotton in a region in India.

Another recommendation for IKEA to be able to internally conduct LCA studies in the future
for agricultural products is to build or purchase an agricultural inventory modelling tool. This
can help to estimate agricultural field emissions to air, water, and soil, based on primary data
about the agricultural inputs. Further, the effect of different field-level management practices
could also be accounted for by modifying the relevant parameters used to model the inventory
in the tool.

7.3 Sustainability decision-making

IKEA’s ambition to become ‘Water Positive’ includes improving the quality and availability of
water, therefore a recommendation is to reinforce this goal by incorporating water quality
impacts into the decision-making process. As stated by UNEP (2011) water quantity is often
the focus of corporate water management agenda, whereas water quality is rather overlooked,
however it is equally important in terms of risks and impacts. Addressing water quality issues
can help identify incidence of diseases, damaged ecosystems, or the inability of other users to
use such water. In addition, it is also recommended that IKEA considers impact level
indicators instead of inventory level in decision-making, as water consumption at the
inventory level does not address scarcity impacts.

When evaluating water quality, it should be considered that accounting for water use is already
a complex task, and it is even more for effluents, due to the many factors that need to be
considered such as: pollutants coming from the industry and agriculture, interactions among
pollutants, and the different perspectives to assess impacts to ecosystems and communities.
And to measure water quality, different characteristics should be considered, such as: physical
(e.g., temperature, turbidity/light penetration, and flow velocity), chemical (e.g., pH, salinity,
dissolved oxygen, nitrate, phosphate, biological oxygen demand [BOD], toxics, chemical
oxygen demand [COD]), and biological characteristics (e.g., abundance of zooplankton, and
other organisms that serve as an indicator of ecosystem health). In addition, short- and long-
47
term effects of the pollutants on waterways, and their impacts on human health, human access
to safe water, and ecosystem function should also be taken into consideration (UNEP, 2011).

As it was seen in this study, LCA can analyze quality impacts such as eutrophication,
ecotoxicity, aquatic acidification and human toxicity. However, it should be noted that LCA is
a relative method that is normalized to the functional unit analyzed, and that it is not applied
to a whole ecosystem or watershed analysis (UNEP, 2011). In addition, LCA does not provide
a regionalized assessment, as it is not site-specific. As it was explained in section 4.1.4, it rather
analyzes potential contributions to the different impact categories by converting inventory
results to common units and aggregating such converted results within an impact category.

On the other hand, the main strengths of LCA are that it can compare which product, material,
or process has the lowest environmental contribution throughout a life cycle; it can evaluate
hotspots which can dictate the changes in the life cycle that should be modified to reduce
environmental impacts of concern, as described in section 4.1. Thus, LCA can indicate where
to put the efforts along the life cycle of a product, whether it is in the raw materials extraction,
manufacturing, transport, use, or waste disposal. A further recommendation for IKEA would
be to perform a cradle-to-grave LCA as it could give a broader analysis of the potential water
availability and quality impacts. To provide an even more holistic analysis it is advised to also
consider more impacts than water-related ones, as was the case of the studies by Liu et al.
(2020) and Wendin (2016) mentioned in section 3.4. Since this is an Environmental LCA
study, the focus is not on social or economic aspects along the product life cycle. For such an
analysis it is recommended to perform a Social LCA (SLCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). The
latter does not replace cost accounting, it rather compares costs related to the life cycle stages
of the products, indicates direct and indirect costs, and estimates possible improvements
(Rebitzer & Nakamura, 2008).

8. Conclusion
One of the main objectives of this LCA study was to compare the environmental impacts and
trade-offs of virgin and recycled cotton yarns. The results showed that for virgin yarns the
main stages that contributed the most to the impacts were cotton cultivation and spinning.
From a perspective of water availability, the impacts came from water required in irrigation
within the cotton cultivation stage. As for water quality, the impacts were mostly coming from
electricity use and direct field emissions from cotton cultivation. Relevant findings in this
setting were that the use of fossil-based electricity had adverse effects on water quality
impacts, it was seen that switching to renewable energy improves water quality. In addition,
the analysis showed that reducing water use also reduces climate impact as lesser energy is
needed for irrigation. Moreover, this study demonstrated that there were high differences
between the impacts in the countries studied. The findings pointed out that there is a need to
focus on regions with high impacts per unit of cotton yarns, such as India and Pakistan. In the
case of Better Cotton, the results showed that there are significant water savings compared to
conventional cotton. However, to assess other impact categories for Better Cotton, more data
and expertise will be needed.

Regarding recycled yarns, the study showed that the hotspots were transport and electricity
use. Whereof electricity use (with a major share of hydropower) affected mostly water
availability impacts, while transport affected all impact categories except for water availability.
However, no trade-offs were observed in recycled yarns compared to virgin yarns as the
impacts of the first are negligible, even when using conventional energy. Thus, there is a
proportional reduction in impacts as recycled cotton percentage is increased, from that
analysis it was shown that using recycled cotton can contribute to fulfilling IKEA’s long-term
ambition of becoming ‘Water Positive’.

48
9. References
BASF, 2021. e3® Sustainable Cotton directly connects all members of the cotton fiber value chain,
from cotton farmers to brands and retailers. [Online] Available at: https://agriculture.basf.us/crop-
protection/e3-cotton.html [Accessed 21 June 2021]

Better Cotton Initiative, 2018. BCI Principles and Criteria. Version 2.1. [Online] Available at:
https://bettercotton.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Better-Cotton-Principles-Criteria-V2.1.pdf
[Accessed 21 June 2021]

Better Cotton Initiative, 2019. BCI Outlines Step-Change on Impact Measurement. [Online] Available
at: https://bettercotton.org/blog/bci-outlines-step-change-on-impact-measurement/ [Accessed 20
June 2021]

Better Cotton Initiative, 2021a. About BCI. [Online] Available at: https://bettercotton.org/about-bci/
[Accessed 21 June 2021]

Better Cotton Initiative, 2021b. BCI History. [Online] Available at: https://bettercotton.org/about-
bci/bci-history/ [Accessed 21 June 2021]

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Appendix I – Recycled cotton inventory questionnaire
Amount
(number if Location of the Manual or
Input/ applies, X if process (city, Automated
output Processes Categories doesn't apply) Unit country) process?
Collection post- Post-consumer
consumer waste cotton textiles
Type of transport
Transport (collection (truck/ train/
of post-consumer ship, engine type,
waste) etc.)
Post-consumer
Sorting cotton textiles

Sorting Electricity

Sorting Water

Input Sorting Other inputs?

Sorting Waste textile

After sorting
Output Sorting textile

Input Remove accessories Electricity

Type of transport
Transport (sorting to (truck/ train/
remove accessories ship, engine type,
process) etc.)
After sorting
Remove accessories textile

Remove accessories Other inputs?

Textile after
accessories’
Output Remove accessories removal

Remove accessories Accessories waste

Remove accessories Other outputs?

Type of transport
Transport (Remove (truck/ train/
accessories to cutting ship, engine type,
Input process) etc.)
Textile after
accessories’
Cutting removal

Cutting Electricity

Cutting Other inputs?

After cutting
Output Cutting textile

Cutting Waste textile

Cutting Other outputs?

Type of transport
(truck/ train/
Transport (Cutting to ship, engine type,
Input shredding process) etc.)

Shredding Electricity
After cutting
Shredding textile

Shredding Other inputs?

54
 Recycled cotton
Output Shredding fibre
Waste
Shredding textile/fibre

Shredding Other outputs?

Type of transport
(truck/ train/
Transport (Shredding ship, engine type,
Input to spinning process) etc.)

Spinning Water

Spinning Electricity

Spinning Other inputs ?

Output Spinning Yarns

Spinning By-product

Spinning Other outputs ?

Appendix II - Inventory calculations

Places Distance (km) Quantity (units) Distance*quantity

(unit * km)

Textile mill in the US/ 200 km 1.097 200*1.097*0.001=

Brazil to the ports 0.22

Port of Savannah, 14336 nautical miles* 1.097 26550.272*1.097*0.0

United States to Port 1.852= 26550.27 km 01= 29.13
of Shanghai, China

Port of Santos, Brazil 13256 nautical 1.097 24550.112*1.097*0.0

to Port of Shanghai, miles*1.852= 01= 26.93
China 24550.11 km

Port in China to 480 miles * 1.61 = 1.097 772.4832*1.097*0.00

textile mill in China 772.48 km 1=0.85

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Appendix III - Characterization results

Figure A1. Comparative results for the impacts of 100% virgin yarns, 75% virgin plus 25%
recycled mixed yarns, and 50% virgin plus 50% recycled mixed yarns for Brazil

Figure A2. Comparative results for the impacts of 100% virgin yarns, 75% virgin plus 25%
recycled mixed yarns, and 50% virgin plus 50% recycled mixed yarns for India

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Figure A3. Comparative results for the impacts of 100% virgin yarns, 75% virgin plus 25%
recycled mixed yarns, and 50% virgin plus 50% recycled mixed yarns for Pakistan

Figure A4. Comparative results for the impacts of 100% virgin yarns, 75% virgin plus 25%
recycled mixed yarns, and 50% virgin plus 50% recycled mixed yarns for the US

57
TRITA ABE-MBT-12545

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