Wool LCA - The Impact of Change Management CLSD

Life cycle assessment (LCA)-based rating tools developed for the apparel industry are used to promote a change in demand for textiles by influencing consumer preferences based on the environmental footprint of textiles. This paper analyses the application of the LCA methods to wool production, specifically the application of methods that provide a retrospective assessment of impacts and consequential methods that estimate the impacts of a change. This work supports the notion that the use of a retrospective assessment method to produce information that will guide consumer preferences may not adequately represent the impacts of a consumer’s choice because the difference between retrospective and consequential results may be relatively large. As such, rating tools based on attributional LCA are unlikely to be an adequate indicator of the sustainability of textiles used in the apparel industry.