Product Carbon Footprint · GHG Protocol Product
Sector PCF — Apparel & Textile Calculator | Cotton, Polyester, Wool & Leather
Cradle-to-gate product carbon footprints for apparel and textiles, built up across the full chain — fibre, spinning, weaving or knitting, wet processing, cut-make-trim, trims and packaging — per the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard and ISO 14067:2018. Energy and packaging factors resolve live from verified sources; natural-fibre intensities use disclosed literature defaults you can override. The use phase (laundering), end-of-life, water and microplastics are out of the cradle-to-gate boundary and stated as such.
This is a build-up calculator, and it is explicit about which numbers are measured and which are assumed. Energy lines (grid electricity and thermal fuel, by stage and region) and packaging materials resolve live to verified emission factors. The fibre intensities for natural fibres — cotton, wool, leather — are literature defaults (industry medians), surfaced in the data-quality meter and editable; treat them as stated assumptions, not measured values. The single MB-cited fibre is virgin polyester, built from the PET resin factor. This honesty is the point: a disclosed assumption is more auditable than a hidden one.
System boundary (cradle-to-gate, fixed in v1): The boundary runs from raw fibre through to the finished-goods gate — fibre production, spinning, weaving or knitting, wet processing (dyeing and finishing), cut-make-trim, trims, packaging, and inbound and outbound freight. Out of scope: the use phase (laundering and drying — frequently the single largest life-cycle stage for cotton garments), end-of-life, retail distribution to the consumer, Module D, and land-use change unless entered as a custom line. This is a single-issue CO₂e tool: water consumption and microplastic shedding are not tracked.
Functional unit (declared): per kg fabric (default), per garment, per kg fibre, or per m² fabric. Output is auto-derived from your fibre input: fabric = fibre × (1 − cut-make-trim waste %), then divided by garment mass for a per-garment figure or by fabric weight (GSM) for a per-m² figure. The functional unit is the denominator of the PCF and the most important comparability decision you make.
Co-product allocation (fibre line only): Wool and leather are co-products of sheep and cattle farming, so only a share of the animal’s emissions belongs to the fibre. The calculator applies an economic allocation — default 20% to wool and 10% to leather — as a linear rescale of the fibre line around that embedded default. Cotton and polyester are single products and carry no allocation (the control is hidden). The percentage is a stated decision you own and document.
GWP basis: Factors are carried as published. Nearly every line here is already a pre-weighted CO₂e aggregate (DEFRA, EPA, Ember), so the AR5-versus-AR6 difference is immaterial for this material set; the toggle exists for consistency with the rest of the calculator series.
Factor provenance: Electricity — location-based grid factors by region (DEFRA, EPA eGRID, Ember). Thermal fuel — DEFRA net-CV factors. Packaging and synthetic feedstock — ÖKOBAUDAT and DEFRA material rows (module A1–A3). Natural-fibre intensities — Textile Exchange and Sustainable Apparel Coalition (Higg MSI) medians, disclosed as literature defaults. Spend-based screening — US EPA and DEFRA sector factors, for £/$-only data.
When you leave System output blank it is derived from your total fibre input: fabric = fibre × (1 − cut-make-trim waste), then converted to garments (÷ garment mass) or m² (÷ GSM). Yield and co-product allocation are your assumptions, not MasterBrain factors.
Add the fibre, process energy, trims and packaging above to calculate
Results appear instantly. A contribution-by-stage bar, source hotspots (Pareto), a data-quality / confidence meter, a literature-fibre share note and the full audit trail appear after calculation.
Results are indicative cradle-to-gate Product Carbon Footprints for textile and apparel products, aligned with the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard and ISO 14067:2018, reported per the declared unit you choose. There is no published per-product or per-fibre apparel PCF in MasterBrain — the figure is built up along the apparel value chain from MasterBrain grid, fuel, material and freight factors plus literature fibre intensities (Textile Exchange / Sustainable Apparel Coalition Higg MSI), then divided by the system output. Fibre intensities and the yield / allocation assumptions are your own inputs, not MasterBrain factors — except virgin polyester, derived from the verified PET resin factor × a texturising uplift. Wool and leather embed an editable economic co-product allocation; the allocation method is a contested, reported choice. The use stage (laundering, drying), end-of-life, retail distribution to the consumer and Module D are outside this boundary, as are water, microplastics and other non-GHG impacts. Generic literature factors suit early-stage estimating only — replace the most material inputs with supplier-specific (primary) data, document the boundary and allocation, and complete a critical review under ISO 14067 / ISO 14071 before publishing a PCF, issuing an EPD, or exchanging product footprints.
An apparel carbon footprint travels a longer road than a food one. A kilogram of fabric passes through fibre production, spinning, weaving or knitting, dyeing and finishing, and cut-make-trim before it reaches the finished-goods gate — and every stage adds emissions in a different place depending on the fibre, the country, and the energy mix that powers the mill. The result is a number brands put on hangtags, customers cite in comparisons, and auditors trace stage by stage before it enters a supplier’s Scope 3 Category 1 return.
This calculator builds the footprint up across the full cradle-to-gate chain, resolves energy and packaging to verified factors, applies the wool and leather co-product allocations explicitly, and is candid about its two biggest limits — that natural-fibre intensities are disclosed literature defaults, and that the use phase that often dominates a cotton garment’s life-cycle sits outside the boundary. The result conforms to ISO 14067 and is accounted under the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard, with a full audit trail and data-quality grade on every export.
An apparel PCF is the unit of currency in fashion-supply-chain decarbonisation. Your brand customers need it for their Scope 3 Category 1 (purchased goods) inventory; a product environmental claim needs it under ISO 14067; and the wet-processing energy that usually dominates the footprint is where the biggest reductions live. This calculator produces the per-unit PCF, the stage-by-stage breakdown, and the audit trail.
See the Food PCF Calculator Too →
What Is an Apparel PCF? The Five-Stage Chain, Functional Units, and Boundary
An apparel product carbon footprint (PCF) is the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with a defined quantity of a textile product, expressed in CO₂e per functional unit over a stated system boundary — typically per garment or per kilogram of fabric at the finished-goods gate. What makes apparel distinctive is the length of the chain: emissions accrue across five physical stages before the product exists, and the dominant stage shifts depending on the fibre and the energy mix that powers each mill.
The Five-Stage Chain
Every garment in this calculator is built up across the same sequence, and the contribution bar in the result makes the composition visible.
- Fibre production. Growing cotton, rearing sheep for wool, raising cattle for hide, or polymerising polyester from petrochemical feedstock. For natural fibres this stage uses a disclosed literature intensity; for virgin polyester it is built from the MB-cited PET resin factor.
- Spinning. Turning fibre into yarn — an electricity-intensive step driven by the local grid factor.
- Weaving or knitting. Constructing fabric from yarn, again largely electricity.
- Wet processing (dyeing and finishing). Scouring, bleaching, dyeing, and finishing — the most energy- and heat-intensive stage, and usually the single largest contributor to the gate footprint.
- Cut-make-trim (CMT). Cutting fabric and assembling the garment, plus trims and packaging. A cutting-waste percentage means fabric input exceeds finished-garment output.
Build-Up, Not a Database Lookup
The calculator stores no per-garment PCFs. It builds the footprint from your activity data — kilograms of fibre, kilowatt-hours per stage, kilograms of trims and packaging — resolving each line to a factor and summing to a gate total. The honest qualifier, stated throughout: the energy and packaging factors are read live from verified libraries, but the natural-fibre intensities are literature medians you should treat as assumptions and override with supplier data where you have it.
The Functional-Unit Problem
The functional unit is the denominator, and it can flip a comparison without changing a single emission. Per kilogram of fibre flatters a lightweight garment; per garment penalises a heavy coat against a T-shirt; per square metre suits fabric buyers but not brands. The calculator offers four units and auto-derives them from your fibre input. A fifth — per wear, which would normalise by garment durability and is arguably the most meaningful unit for fashion — is a noted future enhancement, not yet in v1.
Cradle-to-gate stops at the finished-goods gate. For a cotton T-shirt washed dozens of times over its life, the laundering and drying energy across that life can rival — sometimes exceed — everything the cradle-to-gate footprint counts. A synthetic garment, lighter and quicker-drying, often has a lower use-phase burden but raises end-of-life and microplastic questions this single-issue CO₂e tool does not address. None of that is in the number this calculator produces. That is not a flaw to hide; it is a boundary to declare. When you publish a cradle-to-gate apparel PCF, say so plainly, and never compare it to a cradle-to-grave figure that includes the use phase.
Included vs Excluded — The Cradle-to-Gate Boundary
| Included in this calculator (cradle-to-gate) | Excluded — out of v1 boundary |
|---|---|
| Fibre production (literature intensity; virgin polyester MB-cited) | Use phase — laundering and drying (often the largest stage for cotton) |
| Spinning electricity (by region grid factor) | End-of-life (landfill, incineration, recycling — Module C) |
| Weaving / knitting electricity | Retail distribution to the consumer |
| Wet processing — dyeing and finishing (electricity + thermal heat) | Module D (recycling credits beyond the boundary) |
| Cut-make-trim, trims, and packaging | Land-use change (unless entered as a custom line) |
| Inbound and outbound freight | Water consumption and microplastic shedding (non-GHG) |
| Wool / leather co-product allocation | Emissions not entered as an activity line |
Cotton PCF — Cultivation, Ginning, and Why Wet Processing Dominates
Cotton is the default fibre the calculator boots with, and a useful illustration of where apparel emissions actually sit. The instinct is that growing the cotton dominates; in a cradle-to-gate footprint of a dyed garment, it usually does not.
The cotton fibre stage in this calculator uses a literature intensity — 2.1 kg CO₂e/kg fibre for conventional cotton, 1.6 for organic (Textile Exchange and Higg MSI medians). That single number embeds cultivation, fertiliser N₂O, ginning, and irrigation energy. It is deliberately not built from the live DEFRA fertiliser factor that the food calculator uses, because doing so on top of a literature intensity that already includes cultivation would double-count the field emissions. A field-level cotton-N₂O build-up — separating fertiliser, ginning, and irrigation into their own lines — is a documented v1.1 advanced option.
What dominates instead is wet processing. Dyeing and finishing are heat-intensive, and in regions with carbon-heavy grids and gas-fired process heat the wet-processing stage routinely accounts for the majority of a dyed cotton garment’s gate footprint. The worked example below makes this concrete: the fibre is 22% of the total and wet processing around 70%. The practical implication is that the biggest reduction lever for a cotton garment is usually not the cotton — it is the energy and heat source of the dyehouse.
Water is out of scope. Cotton’s water footprint is real and important, but it is not a greenhouse-gas impact; this is a single-issue CO₂e tool and does not track it. Where water matters to your reporting, use a dedicated water-footprint method alongside this one.
Polyester & Synthetics PCF — Feedstock, Energy, and the Use-Phase Caveat
Polyester is the most-used apparel fibre by volume, and the one fibre in this calculator built from a MasterBrain-cited factor rather than a literature default. Virgin polyester is constructed from the PET resin row (3.8639 kg CO₂e/kg) with a 1.20 texturising-and-spinning uplift, giving 4.637 kg CO₂e/kg fibre. That makes the synthetic feedstock more transparent than the natural-fibre intensities — a useful counterpoint to the assumption that natural always means lower-carbon or better-documented.
| Synthetic / regenerated fibre | Intensity (kg CO₂e/kg fibre) | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Virgin polyester | 4.637 | MB-cited (PET resin × 1.20) |
| Recycled polyester (rPET) | 2.2 | Literature default |
| Nylon | 6.4 | Literature default |
| Acrylic | 5.4 | Literature default |
| Viscose | 3.0 | Literature default |
| Elastane | 8.5 | Literature default |
Recycled polyester roughly halves the virgin figure because it avoids polymerising new resin from petrochemical feedstock — the same logic that makes secondary aluminium far lower-carbon than primary. Nylon and elastane are the most intensive; even small elastane percentages in a stretch fabric carry weight per kilogram.
The use-phase caveat cuts the other way for synthetics. Synthetic garments are typically lighter and dry faster, so their excluded use-phase burden is often lower than cotton’s. But they raise end-of-life and microplastic-shedding questions that this cradle-to-gate, single-issue CO₂e tool does not capture. A fair fibre comparison has to be explicit that the boundary excludes exactly the stages where the natural-versus-synthetic trade-off is most contested — which is why the next sections treat that comparison carefully rather than declaring a winner.
Wool PCF — Enteric Methane and the Wool:Meat Allocation Problem
Wool is a co-product of sheep farming, and its footprint depends almost entirely on a single decision: how much of the sheep’s emissions — chiefly enteric methane — the wool carries versus the meat.
The wool fibre stage uses a literature intensity of 12.0 kg CO₂e/kg, which embeds sheep husbandry at a 20% economic co-product allocation (wool’s share of the flock’s market value versus meat). Important honesty point: the engine does not read a live sheep enteric factor to build this up. MasterBrain does hold a sheep enteric row (223.2 kg CO₂e/head/yr, biogenic methane, AR6 basis), but the v1 apparel engine does not use it; the husbandry emissions are embedded in the 12.0 intensity at the default allocation. Sheep manure, which IPCC expresses on a volatile-solids basis rather than per head, is too granular for a v1 build-up and is not separately modelled.
The allocation control rescales that fibre line. Raise the wool share above 20% and the wool footprint rises proportionally; lower it and it falls. Because the embedded husbandry emissions are large relative to the processing stages, the allocation percentage moves the wool PCF more than almost any other input — which is exactly why the standards require you to state and justify it. The calculator applies your stated percentage linearly; it does not derive a biophysical split from flock parameters.
Leather PCF — The Hide:Beef Allocation Battleground and Tanning
Leather is the most contested footprint in apparel, because a hide is a co-product of beef and the question “how much of the cow belongs to the leather?” has no single right answer — only stated conventions that move the result by multiples.
The leather fibre stage uses a literature intensity of 14.0 kg CO₂e/kg, embedding cattle husbandry at a 10% economic co-product allocation (the hide’s modest share of the animal’s market value relative to the meat) and including chrome-tanning processing energy. As with wool, the engine does not read live cattle enteric or manure rows to build this up; the husbandry is embedded at the default allocation. There is no standalone tanning factor in MasterBrain — the tanning energy is inside the 14.0 intensity, a gap flagged in the audit panel rather than papered over with a fabricated standalone number.
The 10% economic default reflects that a hide is worth far less than the meat. A mass-based allocation would assign leather more; a method that treats the hide as a waste stream the meat industry would discard anyway would assign it almost nothing. Each is defensible under different framings, and the calculator lets you set the percentage — but whatever you choose must be declared, because it is the dominant lever in the entire leather result.
Worked Example — Cotton Garment, Reproduced to the Digit
This is the example the calculator boots with: a conventional cotton garment run, declared per garment, processed in the United Kingdom. Every figure is reproduced from the live engine (MasterBrain v2026.203) and reconciles exactly — you can check the tool against this page and the page against the tool.
Natural vs Synthetic — Why There Is No Clean Winner
The most-searched question in apparel sustainability — is natural fibre lower-carbon than synthetic? — has no honest one-word answer. The ranking depends on the functional unit, the system boundary, and the durability of the garment, and changing any one of them can reverse the result.
It Depends on Where You Draw the Line
On a cradle-to-gate, per-kilogram-of-fibre basis, recycled polyester (≈2.2) can sit below conventional cotton (≈2.1) only marginally, while virgin polyester (4.637) sits well above it and wool (12.0) and leather (14.0) far above both. That looks like a clear case against animal fibres. But three things complicate it:
- The functional unit. Fibres are not used in equal masses. A durable wool coat worn for a decade and a synthetic fast-fashion top discarded in a season are not comparable per kilogram — or even per garment. The fairest unit, per wear, is precisely the one cradle-to-gate tools (including this one, in v1) do not yet offer.
- The excluded use phase. Cotton’s laundering burden across a garment’s life can rival its production footprint; synthetics often wash and dry with less energy. The boundary that makes cotton look good excludes the stage where it looks worse — and vice versa for synthetics’ end-of-life.
- Allocation. Wool and leather footprints are dominated by how the animal’s emissions are split between fibre and meat. A different, equally defensible allocation can move them by multiples, as the previous sections showed.
A fair fibre comparison would be cradle-to-grave (including use and end-of-life), per wear (normalised for durability), with allocation held to a single declared method across all fibres. No widely available calculator does all three today, and this one is explicit that it does none of them in v1 — it is cradle-to-gate, per garment or per kg, with fibre-specific allocations. That does not make it useless; it makes it a production-stage tool whose boundary you must respect when you interpret the number. Anyone who tells you natural beats synthetic, or the reverse, without naming the unit and the boundary is selling a conclusion the data does not support.
Allocation Methods — Why Wool:Meat and Hide:Beef Drive the Result
For cotton and polyester, allocation does not arise — they are single products, and the calculator hides the control. For wool and leather it is the dominant lever, because both fibres are co-products of animals raised primarily for meat, and the share of the animal’s emissions assigned to the fibre determines most of the footprint.
The Common Approaches
| Method | Basis of split | Effect on wool / leather | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economic (default here) | Relative market value of fibre vs meat | Low share to fibre (wool 20%, leather 10%) | Moves with volatile commodity prices, not physics |
| Mass | Relative physical mass of fibre vs carcass | Very low for leather; modest for wool | Treats a high-value hide like bulk waste |
| Protein / biophysical | Feed energy or protein attributable to each output | Method-dependent; can raise fibre share | Complex; requires animal-level parameters |
| Waste / no allocation | Hide treated as a residue the meat industry discards | Near-zero footprint to leather | Contested; assumes the fibre carries no upstream burden |
How This Calculator Applies It
The calculator carries an economic allocation embedded in the wool (20%) and leather (10%) literature intensities, and the allocation control rescales the fibre line linearly around that default — effectively multiplying the embedded fibre emissions by your chosen percentage divided by the default. Set wool to 30% and the wool fibre line rises by half; set leather to 5% and it halves. The engine does not recompute a biophysical split from animal parameters; the percentage is your stated, documented decision. Use the same method across every fibre you compare, and record it in your methodology notes — an undeclared allocation is the fastest way to make a wool or leather PCF unverifiable.
Standards Landscape — GHG Product, ISO 14067, EU PEF, and the Higg MSI
An apparel PCF sits across several frameworks. Knowing which one you report under sets the comparability rules, the allocation guidance, and the disclosure requirements.
| Standard / framework | Role | Relationship to this calculator |
|---|---|---|
| GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard | The accounting frame most brands report product emissions under | Primary anchor — the engine follows its accounting rules |
| ISO 14067:2018 | The international standard for quantifying a product carbon footprint | Conformance co-anchor — the result is structured to conform |
| EU Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) | The EU’s multi-criteria method; an Apparel & Footwear category rule (PEFCR) is in development | Regional alternative — the apparel PEFCR may prescribe a specific functional unit and allocation; reconcile if reporting under PEF |
| Higg MSI (Cascale / Sustainable Apparel Coalition) | The industry materials-sustainability index whose medians underpin many fibre intensities | Source of the literature fibre defaults used here, not a reporting standard |
The practical guidance: account under the GHG Protocol Product Standard, structure the result to conform to ISO 14067, and if a customer or regulator requires EU PEF, check the Apparel & Footwear Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules once finalised — they may mandate a functional unit and allocation that differ from the defaults here. The Higg Materials Sustainability Index is where many of this calculator’s natural-fibre intensities originate; it is a data source, not a conformance standard, and is cited as such.
How Apparel PCF Feeds Scope 3 Category 1 and Brand Reporting
A product footprint is rarely the end goal — it is an input to a brand’s inventory and a claim on a product. Knowing where it flows tells you how precise it needs to be.
Into Brands’ Scope 3 Category 1
When a mill or manufacturer sells fabric or finished garments to a brand, the product’s PCF becomes part of the brand’s Scope 3 Category 1 (Purchased Goods and Services) inventory. For most fashion brands, purchased goods are the overwhelming majority of total emissions, which is why brands increasingly require supplier-specific PCFs: a measured footprint from you replaces a generic spend-based estimate in their inventory and directly improves their reported data quality. Your footprint is their data — and the data-quality grade on your export is what tells them whether they can use it as primary data or must still treat it as an estimate.
Where the Reductions Actually Are
Because wet processing dominates most garment footprints, the highest-leverage decarbonisation is usually in the dyehouse — switching process heat from fossil gas to electrified or renewable heat, and siting energy-intensive stages on cleaner grids. The calculator’s stage-by-stage breakdown is built to make that visible: it shows not just the total but where in the chain it accrues, so a brand and its suppliers can target the stage that matters rather than the one that is easiest to measure.
Audit Checklist — Eight Common Apparel PCF Errors
Third-party verification of an apparel PCF — under ISO 14067, an EPD programme, or a brand’s supplier-data protocol — traces each line from activity data to the reported per-unit figure. These eight are the most common sources of restated footprints and qualified opinions.
Data Sources, Provenance, Uncertainty, and Data-Quality Grading
Emission Factor Provenance
Factors resolve from MasterBrain v2026.203. The split between live-read and literature-default factors is the page’s central transparency point:
- Electricity (live) — location-based grid factors by region: UK 0.13096 (DEFRA 2026 / Ember), US national 0.349667 (EPA eGRID 2023), and Ember 2025 rows for China, India, Vietnam, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, Poland and more.
- Thermal fuel (live) — DEFRA 2026 net-CV factors: natural gas 0.20199, LPG 0.23032, gas oil 0.27288, diesel 0.26806, fuel oil 0.28523 kg CO₂e/kWh.
- Synthetic feedstock and packaging (live) — virgin polyester from the PET resin row (3.8639/kg × 1.20); thread, polybags and trims from DEFRA and ÖKOBAUDAT material rows (module A1–A3).
- Natural-fibre intensities (literature defaults) — cotton 2.1 (conventional) / 1.6 (organic), wool 12.0 (20% allocation), leather 14.0 (10% allocation), from Textile Exchange and Sustainable Apparel Coalition (Higg MSI) medians. Disclosed as assumptions, not measured values.
- Spend-based screening (live, low confidence) — US EPA supply-chain factors (textile mills 0.497, apparel 0.12, leather 0.282 kg CO₂e/USD) and the DEFRA textiles sector factor (0.685 kg CO₂e/GBP).
Uncertainty and GWP Basis
Energy factors are relatively tight (±10%); literature fibre intensities are wide (frequently ±40% or more, since they aggregate diverse global production); spend-based screening is order-of-magnitude only. On GWP: nearly every line is already a pre-weighted CO₂e aggregate as published by its source, so the AR5-versus-AR6 difference is immaterial for this material set. The toggle exists for consistency with the calculator series rather than because it moves the apparel result.
Data-Quality Grading on Every Export
The calculator grades each line and the result as a whole, reporting the share of primary data (your measured activity data), secondary data (literature and generic factors), and screening data (spend-based fallbacks), with an overall confidence. The built-in worked example, leaning on a literature fibre intensity and generic grid factors, grades accordingly — and the surest way to raise the grade is to replace the literature fibre default with a supplier-specific measured value, which is exactly what a brand customer or verifier will ask for where the product is material.
Methodology Notes and Limitations
Build-up, not lookup. No per-garment PCFs are stored; output quality depends on your activity data. Energy measured, natural fibre assumed. Grid, fuel, and packaging factors are live; cotton, wool, and leather intensities are literature defaults — override them with supplier data where you can. Allocation is your stated choice. Wool 20% / leather 10% economic defaults rescale the fibre line linearly; cotton and polyester carry none. Cradle-to-gate, fixed. Use phase, end-of-life, retail, Module D, land-use change, water and microplastics are out of the v1 boundary. Planned enhancements: a per-wear durability unit, a field-level cotton-N₂O build-up, and live animal-fibre husbandry rows are documented future work, not present in v1.
Frequently Asked Questions
It is the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with a defined quantity of a textile product — a garment, a kilogram of fabric — expressed as CO₂e per functional unit over a stated boundary. This calculator builds it cradle-to-gate across five stages (fibre, spinning, weaving or knitting, wet processing, and cut-make-trim) plus trims and packaging, stopping at the finished-goods gate. It excludes the use phase, end-of-life, water, and microplastics.
There is no honest one-word answer. On a cradle-to-gate per-kilogram basis, conventional cotton and recycled polyester are comparable and low, virgin polyester is higher, and wool and leather are far higher — but that picture changes once you account for durability (per wear), the excluded use phase (cotton’s laundering burden), and the co-product allocation that dominates animal-fibre footprints. A fair comparison would be cradle-to-grave, per wear, with one allocation method across all fibres; no widely available calculator does all three, and this one is explicit that it does none of them in v1.
Dyeing and finishing require large amounts of heat and electricity, and in regions with carbon-heavy grids and gas-fired process heat that stage routinely accounts for the majority of a dyed garment’s gate footprint. In the worked example, wet processing is about 70% of the total and the cotton fibre only 22%. The practical consequence is that the biggest reduction lever is usually the dyehouse’s energy and heat source, not the fibre.
The natural-fibre intensities — cotton, wool, leather — are industry-median literature defaults (Textile Exchange and Higg MSI), surfaced in the data-quality meter and editable. They are stated assumptions, not supplier measurements. The one exception is virgin polyester, which is built from a MasterBrain-cited PET resin factor. Energy and packaging factors are read live from verified libraries. Where a fibre is material to your result, override the literature default with supplier-specific data.
Both are co-products of livestock, and they carry a share of the animal’s emissions — chiefly enteric methane. The default economic allocation assigns 20% of the sheep’s burden to wool and 10% of the cow’s to leather, which still leaves a much larger fibre intensity than cotton. The allocation percentage is the dominant lever: a different but defensible split can move the wool or leather footprint by multiples, which is why you must always declare the method and percentage you used.
No. The v1 boundary is cradle-to-gate and excludes the use phase (laundering and drying), end-of-life, retail distribution, and Module D. This matters most for cotton, where laundering across a garment’s life can rival its production footprint. If you need a full life-cycle figure, treat this gate footprint as the production-stage component and add use and end-of-life separately, declaring the wider boundary.
The processing stages are electricity-intensive, and grid carbon intensity varies enormously by country — from around 0.11 kg CO₂e/kWh on cleaner grids to roughly 0.70 on coal-heavy ones, a factor of six. A garment spun, woven, and dyed in a high-carbon-grid country will have a much larger footprint than the same garment processed on a clean grid. Set the region to where each stage actually takes place; assuming the wrong grid is one of the most common apparel PCF errors.
Yes — that is a primary use. A supplier-specific PCF lets a brand replace a generic spend-based estimate in its Scope 3 Category 1 inventory with primary data, which is the data-quality improvement most fashion brands are pursuing. The audit trail and data-quality grade on the export support that hand-off. For the result to count as primary data, build the material lines — especially the dominant wet-processing energy — from your measured activity data rather than literature defaults or spend-based screening.
You have built a cradle-to-gate apparel product carbon footprint with a stage-by-stage breakdown and audit trail. The PCF feeds your brand customers’ Scope 3 inventories, supports a product-level claim under ISO 14067, and shows where in the chain — usually wet processing — the reductions live.
Because wet processing usually dominates, pair this with the Scope 1 Combustion calculator to model the on-site process heat that drives the footprint, and use the Food PCF calculator if your portfolio spans agricultural products too.
An apparel footprint is usually dominated by wet-processing energy. If you operate the dyehouse or finishing plant, model the on-site fuel combustion behind that stage with the Scope 1 Stationary Combustion Calculator — it accounts for the boilers and process heat this PCF charges to your product. If your portfolio also spans agricultural products, the Sector PCF — Food Calculator applies the same build-up method to beef, dairy, crops, and beverages. Both export audit trails that combine cleanly with this one.
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