Design Life-Cycle

Joanne Tai

Rashmika Manu, Nova Mai

DES 40A

Professor Cogdell

Embodied Energy of Cashmere Wool

Known for its soft, silky texture, the wool of cashmere goats has long been one of the most luxurious fabrics in the world. Taking its name from the Kashmir region in India, cashmere wool has been used throughout history to make sweaters, shawls, and many other garments, all prized for their opulence. However, this luxury is the origin of cashmere’s many negative environmental impacts: from its difficult sourcing from cashmere goats in rural Asia to its thorough processing and distribution, its life before and after usage involves intensive energy input, most of it sourced from fossil fuels. Although relatively low-maintenance when in the hands of the user, as more and more consumers demand this coveted wool, the overall environmental impact of cashmere wool only continues to grow as its demand outpaces its sourcing. All these factors culminate in the high embodied energy of cashmere wool and ultimately its unsustainability.

Though the raw material acquisition for cashmere wool may not seem very complex, it is still a labor- and energy-intensive process. The wool comes from the inner coats of cashmere goats, which are mostly raised in the harsh, yet suitable grasslands of China and Mongolia, and require separation from the outer coat through combing. The goats molt only once every year, during which their wool can be collected, and one goat only produces around 100-160 grams of wool, which is hardly enough for one sweater (Franck 137-139). Only manual labor is required to physically extract the wool from the goats, but the energy needed to raise and maintain the goats is a critical issue. Cashmere goats require ample grasslands to graze upon, but the grasslands in China and Mongolia are faced with desertification due to their damaging hooves and voracity, eating roughly 10% of their body weight each day (“Materials Index: Cashmere”). As such, many herders need to either relocate or transport truckloads of corn or grass to feed their goats, which typically requires diesel, sourced from fossil fuels, to be used as energy (Osnos). This cycle of feeding goats and finding alternative sources is a negative spiral that uses more and more energy: as desertification worsens, they begin to starve and produce less wool, but the increasing consumer demand requires a greater output (“Materials Index: Cashmere”).  More goats would then be needed to make up for the shortage, resulting in the continuation of this cycle and a greater contribution to cashmere’s embodied energy.

The following manufacturing process of cashmere introduces big machinery, and as a result, big energy inputs, into the life cycle of the wool. After cashmere is collected, the wool is transported to factories to be turned into yarn. The methods of transportation and their consequent energy usage depend on the supply chain, though most factories appear to be located in China and energy for cars, trucks, or planes would typically involve fossil fuels. Next, cashmere wool must then undergo scouring, dehairing, carding, spinning, and dyeing to be turned into usable yarn (Nguyen). Scouring involves sorting the cashmere fibers and washing them to remove impurities, which can be done by hand or by machine. Dehairing is commonly a machine process that separates the coarse guard hairs from the desired soft inner hairs, and carding is then done to comb the yarn into thin sheets. Finally, spinning takes the output from carding and twists the sheets into yarn, and dyeing uses mostly chemical dyes and water to finalize the process (Nguyen). Details on scouring are limited, but electricity and heat would be needed to respectively wash and then dry the fibers, and information on cashmere dehairing machines could only be found through online listings, marketing a range in power of around 2 kW to 5 kW using electricity. Carding and spinning machines are more widely used for any type of yarn and can respectively consume around 2124 kWh and 11257-14664 kWh of electricity per day (Khurshid et. al, Wang et. al). Finally, dyeing generally uses much heat energy, sourced from coal and natural gas, to heat the dye water, but the exact temperature and heat energy required is unknown due to the delicate nature of cashmere (Wang et. al). Cashmere yarn is now usable in making garments, holding many branching end results like weaving or knitting in textile mills, which require extra energy for transportation and manufacturing, or exiting the factory as is (Nguyen). However, the process to get to this final stage is lengthy and energy-intensive, and as a result, is not at all sustainable with its lack of renewable energy.

Once cashmere products leave the factory, they are then distributed worldwide to various warehouses, storefronts, and then to the homes of consumers. As supply chains differ in manufacturing, the total distance traveled by any cashmere product is difficult to pinpoint. Ending up in an American store, for example, would require the cashmere to travel from its origin in Asia, then to select yarn and textile mills located mainly in Asia and Europe, and then finally to an American warehouse and store via a combination of boat, plane, or truck, all of which require much fossil fuel usage for its size and long distance. Though cashmere itself does not require any extra energy, the centralized sourcing of cashmere wool means that it cannot be locally sourced elsewhere, and as such its high energy consumption cannot be avoided for distribution to markets outside Asia.

Despite its demanding process until this point, cashmere becomes rather low maintenance once in the hands of the consumer. Garments do not typically require any energy outside of human labor to use or wear, and cashmere’s odor-resistant and long-lasting properties mean that frequent washing or replacements are unnecessary, saving much energy from being consumed (Nguyen). If washing is needed, its delicate nature discourages the use of heat and washing machines, leaving the consumer to handwash and air-dry cashmere garments to keep them in proper condition (Chadha et. al). Using only human and solar energy, cashmere is relatively sustainable in this aspect, but the aforementioned increase in demand, coupled with consumer behavior as “trends” or “seasons” come and go, contributes to the needless acceleration of cashmere products to their next stage in life: recycling.

Recycling cashmere reinserts discarded and end-of-life material back into the life cycle as manufacturing inputs, reducing much of its embodied energy from feeding and maintaining cashmere goats. The company Re-Verso, for example, has been regenerating cashmere from factory scraps, like unused guard hairs, and post-consumer material from major retailers like Ralph Lauren, who recently launched a program to collect and ship 100% cashmere garments from consumers (Paton). Collection would typically involve fossil fuel usage from transportation to Re-Verso’s plants in Italy, although other recycling centers can be located elsewhere and distances traveled may vary. After collection, these materials are then sorted by quality and color and cleaned to remove impurities. It is unclear whether cashmere is sorted by hand or through a machine, which would take human labor and electricity respectively, but cleaning cashmere would have a process and energy consumption similar to scouring during manufacture (“From Trash to Treasure”). Next, the cashmere is mechanically shredded into fibers, dyed for color consistency, and then is finally carded and spun like virgin cashmere (“Recycled Cashmere: How It Works”). Details on shredding are less clear as a recycling process, but machine usage can imply electricity consumption, and the following stages of taking textile waste into cashmere yarn would have an energy requirement identical to its counterparts in manufacturing. Through recycling, cashmere is given a second life to become another garment, replacing the energy required from sourcing the wool with the energy needed from extra processing and transportation. As a result, the recycling of cashmere wool requires a sizable amount of energy, though the comparison with regular sourcing is inexact, but the extension of its lifetime helps the wool become more sustainable in the reuse of precious raw materials.

The final result of cashmere is waste, which has been an integral yet overlooked part of each step of its life cycle. Working backward, pure, untreated cashmere is generally biodegradable, although common dyes and chemicals can extend its lifetime in the landfill (“Materials Index: Cashmere”). The recycling of cashmere would produce around the same wastes as manufacturing, described in detail shortly, and usage typically does not produce any waste. The life cycle of cashmere before its use, however, is where the main pollutants appear. Transportation produces many air pollutants from the extensive usage of fossil fuels, while mechanical operations during the processing of cashmere yield significant air, noise, and carbon pollution. Dyeing, washing, and scouring all produce toxic wastewater, which is then dumped and flows into nearby bodies of water (Ishrat et. al). Finally, at its origin, cashmere goats emit both methane and manure, while their role in the desertification of Asian grasslands contributes to the worsening dust pollution in the world (Osnos). In all of these processes during the course of research, there has been no mention of any accountability or actions towards combating these wastes. The air is left polluted, the water remains contaminated, manure is left to sit, and the world is all the dirtier for it. There is, as a result, no energy consumption to report in this part of cashmere’s life cycle.

Through this life cycle analysis, cashmere wool quickly becomes a shining example of how renewable does not mean sustainable. Though cashmere can be indefinitely gathered from goats, the rate at which it is demanded quickly depletes the environment of its energy resources before it has a chance to recover. Meanwhile, the process of turning the wool into garments and their transportation all the way to consumer households is replete with fossil fuel usage and unaccounted pollution. As consumer demand continues to rise, these practices only exacerbate their negative impact on the planet, and until its production and transportation use more renewable energy, wastes are accounted for, and consumer demand is curbed, cashmere wool can not currently be considered a sustainable product.

Bibliography

Chadha, Tina, and Alexandra Kelly. “How to Wash Cashmere and Wool Sweaters—and Save a Trip to the Dry Cleaners.” Martha Stewart, 4 Jan. 2024, www.marthastewart.com/1517325/how-wash-and-care-cashmere#toc-how-to-dry-a-sweater. 

Davis, Jessica. “Is Cashmere Bad for the Planet? – How Sustainable Is Cashmere?” Harper’s Bazaar, 24 Jan. 2020, www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/fashion/fashion-news/a30184355/how-sustainable-is-cashmere/.

Franck, Robert R. “3 - Cashmere, Camelhair and Other Hair Fibres.” Silk, Mohair, Cashmere and Other Luxury Fibres, Woodhead Publishing, 2001, pp. 133–174. Woodhead Publishing Series in Textiles. 

“From Trash to Treasure: The Environmental Impact of Choosing Recycled Cashmere.” Jindal Textile, 31 Oct. 2023, www.jindaltex.com/blogs/from-trash-to-treasure-the-environmental-impact-of-choosing-recycled-cashmere/. 

Khurshid, Muhammad Furqan, et al. “Investigation of Specific Energy Consumption and Possible Reduction Measures of Textile Spinning Mills.” ResearchGate, June 2012, www.researchgate.net/publication/262308106_Investigation_of_Specific_Energy_Consumption_and_Possible_Reduction_Measures_of_Textile_Spinning_Mills. 

Ishrat, Sheikh I., et al. “Sustainability Issues in the Traditional Cashmere Supply Chain: Empirical Evidence from Kashmir, India.” MDPI, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 11 Dec. 2020, www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/24/10359.  

“Materials Index: Cashmere.” CFDA, cfda.com/resources/materials/detail/cashmere.    

McLendon, Russell. “How Is Cashmere Made and Is It Sustainable?” Treehugger, 5 May 2021, www.treehugger.com/what-is-cashmere-5083874.  

Mishler, Jennifer. “What Is Cashmere Made of and Why Shouldn’t You Buy It?” Sentient Media, 26 Aug. 2022, sentientmedia.org/what-is-cashmere-made-of/.  

Nguyen, Quynh. “How Sustainable Are Cashmere Fabrics? A Life-Cycle Analysis.” Impactful Ninja, impactful.ninja/how-sustainable-are-cashmere-fabrics/.  

Osnos, Evan. “How Your Cashmere Pollutes the Air.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 24 Dec. 2006, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-dec-24-adfg-cashmere24-story.html.

Paton, Elizabeth. “Who Will Take Your Old Cashmere?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Jan. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/fashion/ralph-lauren-cashmere-recycling-program.html.

“Recycled Cashmere: How It Works.” Lowie, Lowie, 29 Oct. 2019, www.ilovelowie.com/blogs/news/recycled-cashmere-how#:~:text=How%20is%20cashmere%20recycled%3F,be%20shorn%20from%20an%20animal.      

University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. “Cashmere Goats.” UC ANR Small Farms Network, Dec. 1992, sfp.ucanr.edu/pubs/brochures/Cashmeregoats/.  

Wang, Laili, et al. “The Energy Footprint of China’s Textile Industry: Perspectives from Decoupling and Decomposition Analysis.” MDPI, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 22 Sept. 2017, mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/10/1461. 

Nova Mai

DES 40A

Professor Cogdell

June 4th 2024

Cashmere Life Cycle Analysis - Waste

Cashmere has long been regarded as a luxury material praised for its ethicality in animal welfare and sustainability in being a biodegradable material. However, despite being more sustainable than other synthetic materials, it still suffers the same flaws in sustainability as other materials in the fashion industry, primarily in its generation of waste throughout its lifecycle. While the material itself may be biodegradable, the inefficient production time of cashmere as well as the byproduct associated with cashmere livestock rearing, processing, recycling, and disposal creates an impractical amount of waste and emissions that is counterproductive to cashmere's sustainable properties. 

In the burgeoning age of environmental consciousness, many consumers have begun looking into sustainable alternatives for their fashion choices. However, “sustainable” labeling can have multiple different convoluted interpretations. Is a recycling label alone enough to warrant sustainability? Or biodegradability? Or reusability? As the focus is oftentimes placed solely on the end-of-life stages of an item, it can be easy to overlook the other issues within acquisition, production, and other stages associated with the various “middle-men” that mass produced items fall through. Thus, research into the sustainability of an item warrants a thorough life cycle exploration of its embodied outputs.

Being an animal produced primary material, emissions for the production of cashmere begins with the livestock rearing portion of production. Cashmere is derived from a specific breed of goats that grow a unique undercoat during winter. As opposed to sheep who have been selectively bred to constantly produce wool, cashmere goats produce their desired hair only partially throughout the year, being harvested in March to May through combing as they shed their down coats. While this attribute has been praised by animal welfare activists who oppose the shearing practices of the wool industry, this relatively short production period results in much more embodied emissions to produce a certain amount of cashmere.

The average cashmere goat produces an amount of about 4 ounces of wool annually. This means that it takes a year's worth of production from 4 to 6 goats to produce a single sweater depending on size, while an overcoat can take up to 30 or 40 goats (cfda). In comparison, a single sheep produces around 4.5 kilograms or 10 pounds of wool per year, which is about 6 sweaters (iwto.org). A study conducted in Mongolian cashmere goats showed that the goats produce an average of around 10 to 15 grams of methane per day depending on diet, which averages to about 5 kg worth of methane per year (Guo 2008), so if we are to take into account the amount of goats it takes to produce, a pound of cashmere has about 20 - 30 kilograms worth of embodied emissions. As their production period spans only a few winter months, that means 3/4ths of that amount is dedicated not even towards cashmere production, but simply the time it takes to keep the goats alive until their productive months, making this emission count redundant on top of being environmentally damaging. As it shows, the short production period of cashmere greatly increases the embodied emissions found within any cashmere product.

In between stages of production, processing, and selling, cashmere undergoes much international travel which takes up many hefty carbon emissions. Cashmere is first harvested in its country of origin, usually originating in rural or remote areas as these cashmere goats are raised in a nomadic lifestyle requiring ample countryside space. To be processed, they are usually shipped off to urban facilities which can be some distance away. A study on cashmere production in Iran shows on map the transportation routes taken between cashmere production and processing centers, one route being 577 miles from Kerman to Senman, the shortest route being 236 miles from Mashhad to Birjand (Renani 2015). These routes are usually taken via plane travel, being about 2 to 5 hour flights respectively. After processing comes storage, marketing, and retail, all of which can take place in multiple locations and countries. Cashmere is produced in primarily Asian countries afterall, but is popular in many global markets especially in the west, so many international flights are taken spanning tens of hours of travel. For each destination, fossil fuels are used to power the modes of transportation such as planes and ships, and as transportation is one of the largest generators of greenhouse gasses, these spatially impractical travel routes add heavily to cashmeres net emissions.

As Cashmere is processed in a factory setting,  Cashmere undergoes a large amount of energy intensive processing in factories, which is powered by electricity sourced from fossil fuels. Additionally, the chemical processing of cashmere produces much toxic wastewater. Cashmere is processed through a series of blanching, cleaning, dying, and spinning, which produces “graywater”/ commercially used waste water from its use of chlorine dioxide in disinfecting the material, and chemicals like chromium, sulfate, and aniline for dyeing. A study conducted on cashmere’s water footprint shows a water footprint of 250 to 400, these units being representative of the set amount of water needed to absorb the chemical waste produced in processing (Chen et. al 2020). Different regions have different regulations on how this water may be disposed of, but studies into rural areas in India’s cashmere processing plants show that chemical wastewater associated with dyeing has found its way into local communities' river waters, rendering it unfit for human use (Ishrat 2020).

A key component to sustainability is long-time use. With the amount of embodied energy and emissions that goes into cashmere, it ideally should be a durable, long lasting product that is used for lifetime periods, however that is less often the case. People often neglect cashmere maintenance, moth damage is a common issue for cashmere, as well as improper washing which creates dramatic shrinkage in cashmere, all of which often result in cashmere being thrown out. While some industries have begun to introduce recycled cashmere, this oftentimes only includes unsold cashmere. For example, a company Re-Verso, advertised for its use of recycled cashmere, only uses pre-consumer cashmere, meaning that it doesn’t include bought or worn cashmere. Cashmere damaged from moth holes is especially un-recyclable for fear of introducing moth eggs or larvae into the batch when re-spinning.

Recycling of cashmere also produces additional waste. Recycled cashmere more often refers to the practice of companies that repurpose and reprocess cashmere, repinning old cashmere products into yarn once again to create new products, all of which contribute additional emissions. By the time it reaches retail, cashmere fiber is often blended with other foreign fibers such as wool, silk, or even synthetic fibers such as nylon in order to reduce prices. To reprocess this into yarn, these foreign agents must be removed through chemical treatment which produces additional wastewater as well as reducing the durability of the fiber (Ishrat 2020). After the respinning process, the cycle of energy use and emissions start over again with the use of mechanized looms to create new cashmere textiles. With this in mind, not all cashmere even falls into this cycle as most cashmere that has undergone some degree of wearing ends up in landfills. 

While the notion of biodegradable may provide ease-of-mind in regards to discarded cashmere, biodegradability alone rarely quantifies a material being sustainable in its end of life-cycle. Cashmere, while being technically biodegradable, rarely if ever finds its way into compost bins for its use of chemical dyes, usually instead ending up in landfills along with other textiles. The weak microbial environments of garbage dumps do not allow for a smooth transition in cashmere decomposition; Landfills are slow to decompose. A study done in the US on decay rates within landfills show the average decay rate of materials such as cardboard and copy paper being at 0.03 and 0.04 respectively, taking 17 to 23 years for only half of the carbon to be converted to methane (Krause 2023). With these values, it can be anticipated that cashmere products which have been chemically treated would take even longer to break down. While cashmere may not be staying un-decomposed on the earth's surface for hundreds of years like its synthetic counterparts, it is still doing no favor to the earth by taking up space in landfills. Rather than returning to the cycle of nutrients in the soil that all organic material should follow, it instead remains in the toxic man-made environments of rubbish, its eventual decomposition contributing only to the methane and carbon emissions associated with garbage dumps.

While Cashmere may be regarded as an ethical alternative to wool, it is not a sustainable one that is fit for widespread consumption as it holds many impracticalities in production, processing, and transportation. It generates a disproportionate amount of livestock emissions for the amount harvested, it contributes to plane travel carbon emissions through the routes taken in a globalized economy, it renders vast amounts of water toxic through the use of chemical processing, and the vast majority of it is rarely reused or properly disposed of. Cashmere is one of the many examples of how some once-sustainable artisan practices may become distorted once made to fit the demand of capitalistic consumption, as the very countryside environments associated with cashmere goats are devastated by the outputs of its mass production. As it is, a life-cycle analysis of cashmere reveals how the cashmere industry, in its current execution, does not fit into the framework of a net zero emissions future.

Bibliography

Max Krause, Shannon Kenny, Jenny Stephenson,Amanda Singleton. (2023). U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development, Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response, Eastern Research Group Inc.

Ishrat, Imran & Grigg, Nigel & Bezuidenhout, Carel & Jayamaha, Nihal. (2020). Sustainability Issues in the Traditional Cashmere Supply Chain: Empirical Evidence from Kashmir, India. Sustainability. 12. 25. 10.3390/su122410359. 

Cristian Preda, Quentin Grimonprez, Vincent Vandewalle (2021). “Categorical Functional Data Analysis. The cfda R Package.” Mathematics,9 (23). doi:10.3390/math9233074, https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/23/3074.

Wiedemann, S., Biggs, L., Nebel, B. et al. Environmental impacts associated with the production, use, and end-of-life of a woollen garment. Int J Life Cycle Assess 25, 1486–1499 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-020-01766-0

Ansari-Renani, H.R. Cashmere production, harvesting, marketing and processing by nomads of Iran - A review. Pastoralism 5, 18 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13570-015-0040-y

Xuefeng Guo, Huawei Li, Hai Jin, Dexun Lu, Osamu Enishi, and Mitsunori Kurihara. Methane Emissions from Inner Mongolian Cashmere Goats at Different Dietar ent Dietary Nutrient Le y Nutrient Levels. 2008. University of Kentucky UKnowledge. 

Hakansson, Emma. “How Ethical is Cashmere”. GoodOnYouEco. 2022. Web

Chen, Bilin et al. “Carbon Footprint and Water Footprint of Cashmere Fabrics.” Fibres & textiles in Eastern Europe. 2021. 94–99. Web.

Brigitta Danka, A. Grochowska, Kim van Rijt. “Influence Towards a Sustainable Cashmere Supply Chain : A Case Study of a Medium Sized Luxury Fashion Manufacturer in Scotland”. 2017

Schmitz, Rob. "How Your Cashmere Sweater Is Decimating Mongolia's Grasslands". 2016. NPR.

McGregor, Bruce Allan. Australian Cashmere Attributes and Processing(PDF). 2002.(Report). Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. p. 10. 

Paton, Elizabeth (2023-01-24). "Who Will Take Your Old Cashmere?". The New York Times.

Sheaves, Jessica. “Making Cashmere More Sustainable, from Desert to Runway”. NASA Earth Applied Sciences. 2022. Web

Osnos, Evan. “How Your Cashmere Pollutes the Air”. Los Angeles Times. 2006