Research funded by Australian Wool Innovation claims the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s Material Sustainability Index (MSI), a product-focused tool that compares the sustainability of different textile materials, also needs better data inputs, improved transparency, to account for microfibre pollution and to consider the full lifecycle of products.
Researchers Dr Stephen Wiedemann and Dr Kalinda Watson performed a comprehensive analysis of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s MSI in a bid to provide a “constructive contribution” to increasing the reliability and quality of information in the rating system, which is increasingly an important reference tool by many international apparel brands and retailers.
Among key recommendations are the tool is improved to adhere global standards and guidelines for best practice in LCA. A key issue the researchers have is that the tool in its current guise excludes the product use phase and end of life.
The research also argues for microplastic pollution to be included in the MSI, although in fairness to the SAC, there is not – as yet – a universally agreed upon means of measuring microfibre impact, and the SAC has already told us that as soon as one is available, it will be incorporated.
The researchers claim the quality of data in the MSI is, in many instances, poor. They point out that it is common practice in LCA – and other fields of science – to report the scientific confidence in the results, indicating whether the differences are meaningful or just ‘noise’.
