Chemical Footprint of the Wet Processing of Cotton Fabric

Abstract

The chemical footprint (ChF) can identify the harmful effects of discharged chemical pollutants, helping producers to select environmentally friendly chemicals to reduce their negative environmental impact. This paper quantified and evaluated the ChF of the wet processing of cotton fabric with data collected from a dyeing enterprise. The results showed that the discharged sodium hydroxide caused the most severe impact in terms of both human toxicity and ecotoxicity due to the extensive usage and its high toxicity. The discharged sodium carbonate and dimethyl silicone oil also had a greater environmental impact. Comprehensive evaluation of human toxicity and ecotoxicity with a multi-objective grey target decision-making model indicated that the pretreatment process had the most significant impact, followed by the finishing process and dyeing process. More attention should be paid to the pretreatment process, such as the selection of environmentally friendly textile chemicals, in order to reduce the native impacts of the wet processing of cotton fabric.

Comprehensive Assessment of the Chemical Footprint of Yarn Dyed Fabric

“…Ji et al 11 used the assessment of the mean impact method to calculate and evaluate the ChF of dyed wool yarn in its life cycle and compared the ChF of each process. Qian et al 12 quantified and evaluated the ChF of cotton fabric during wet processing with the USEtox method and comprehensively evaluated human toxicity and ecotoxicity with a multi-objective gray target decision-making model.…”