Textile Insight

biodiversity will be suppressed; the end of life as we know it will become more probable. In Net Zero terms this means we must reverse the rate that carbon is being released—not an easy thing to do while striving to sell more product. Textiles are generally acknowledged as one of the most polluting and carbon intensive industries. While in reality, transport, heating, and food are bigger emitters of carbon, apparel is seen as an optional extra for our quality of life. Being less bad is the right direction, but it continues to add to the carbon footprint. ere must now be a drive to achieve a carbon negative status, where more carbon is absorbed during the production process than is released during a product's entire lifecycle. PERFORMANCE DAYS and Functional Fabric Fair by PERFORMANCE DAYS set out last year to help this industry analyze the contribution of its individual parts to the Climate Crisis. Several measurement systems have been suggested to track the Lifecycle Analysis (LCA) of our products. e Higg Index has been a commonly adopted metric; its Materials Sustainability Index (MSI) works well when comparing similar textiles in like fibers, such as cotton to cotton, or polyester to polyester. Our exhibitors have been offered free training in helping them towards this objective. In our mission as leading sustainable marketplace, we also point out that there are alternative tools for CO2 evaluation; and have given the exhibitors the option to input results using alternative 6 • Textile Insight Functional Fabric Fair Special Edition ~ April 2023 textileinsight.com The aim is to support the industry in making a better assessment in the future in terms of the CO2 footprint when selecting the fibers and materials used. F O C U S TO P I C

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