Miljørelateret leverandørstyring i tekstilindustrien

English Summary

This report describes a rather simple system for evaluation of the environmental impact of textile production through the complete life cycle. The system is developed to cover all steps in the life cycle of textile production, which have been developed through the past 10 years by Novotex for the production of Green Cotton® textiles.

The aim of the system is to get quantitative measurements for the environmental impact in each step of the life cycle of textiles. By this, the status of each activity is made, and, over time, it can be evaluated, if the companies involved are still improving the environmental impact of the production. Both are demanded by Novotex for all companies delivering goods or services in the Production of Green Cotton® textiles, and they are general demands for companies participating in the EEC order no. 1836/93 of 29. June 1993 on environmental management and auditing (EMAS).

The environmental evaluation system is build as a tool for internal evaluation of the suppliers environmental ability, and must not be recognised as a »check-list« for environmental life cycle assessment or as the final goals for environmentally compatible textile production.

Never the less, the system establish a »best practice« for a number of key features in the textile production, through the fact that the highest number gained in the score, reflects the value of the best environmental practice of the present knowledge and technology.

As a consequence of this, the questionnaire are subject to adjustments, matching the future developments in knowledge and technical ability in the life cycle of textiles.

The system is build as a questionnaire, divided into a number of main topics: Environmental management, life cycle assessment, communication, production and product/intermediate product. These main topics are subdivided into a number of environmental topics, to which a number of questions are asked.

The questions are given as multiple choice, and each choice are scored from 0 to 6 points, lowest for the poorest and highest for the best environmental performance. The score can be used for calculating average environmental performance in each environmental topic, the main topics or the activity as a total. These calculated averages of score gives quantitative environmental descriptions of the activity, and can be used as a basis for evaluating the environmental performance of the activity in general.