The Impact Calculator:
measure your footprint now

To achieve the industry’s 2030 goal, companies need reliable data. Our tool - the Impact Calculator - helps you calculate your carbon and water footprint. The Impact Calculator provides you with an initial estimate and assessment on the materials and process steps that contribute most to your overall environmental impact. It is available to any textile production facility applying for, or already holding an OEKO-TEX® STeP certification.

Understand: production-related carbon emissions and water usage at factory, process step, and per kg of product level
Identify: processes with highest environmental impact
Act: to reduce carbon and water usage in the future
Report: results and reduction measures to your partners

OEKO-TEX® with its partner Quantis, a leading sustainability consultancy, chose the Screening Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to develop the tool.

A Screening LCA is easier, faster and less expensive than a full LCA – and it provides sufficient initial and credible insight into where a facility’s biggest carbon emissions and water impacts occur across its processing steps and for the types of fibres used.

Our tool methodology required a customized approach to calculate carbon emissions and water footprints addressing the specific needs and processes of textile production facilities. We applied elements from the Product LCA to measure the impacts at the material output level, and the Corporate LCA to measure the impacts at the overall facility level.

We incorporated recognized international databases and recommended standards:

The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol recommends the IPCC 2013 100a approach for calculating carbon emissions (Co2-eq).
The EU Commission recommends the AWARE methodology to measure the water impacts (m3).

Once a facility has enteredits data into the tool, the totals are allocated across the production processes and multiplied by relevant data from ecoinvent v.3.5 and the World Apparel and Footwear Database (WALDB) databases. The WALDB is internationally recognized and developed by Quantis in collaboration with many textile companies.

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a framework used to analyze the potential environmental impacts of products or services during their entire life cycle. It covers five stages: raw material extraction, manufacturing & processing, transportation, usage & retail, and waste disposal. Many LCA standards have been developed typically based on the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards.

There are different types of LCAs:

Product LCAs assess the environmental impacts of a single product throughout its value chain.
Comparative LCAs compare the impacts of identical functional units of products, for example, comparing the LCA of a T-Shirt made of cotton vs. viscose.
Corporate LCAs often defined as Corporate Footprint assess an organization’s entire footprint, including employee transportation and focuses generally only on the carbon footprint and not the water footprint.

Consumers and brands alike are increasingly selecting products and companies that demonstrate climate action and commitments. In response, over 100 fashion brands have signed the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, committing to reducing GHG emissions by 30% by 2030. In addition to carbon emissions, water risk is growing, and the apparel sector is underperforming in measurement and monitoring its water impacts (according to a CDP industry comparison report).

Do you need more information? Download the info brochure

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OEKO-TEX® Impact Calculator - Flyer

Product information • OEKO-TEX® STeP

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