The Made-By Environmental Benchmark for Fibres was developed a number of years ago and compared the environmental impact of the most commonly used fibres in the garment industry. Made-By was a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to ‘make sustainable fashion common practice’.
The Made-By Benchmark ranks 28 fibres on six criteria: greenhouse gas emissions; human toxicity; eco-toxicity; energy; water; and land.
Based on these parameters, each fibre is scored and placed into one of five classifications—Class A to Class E. Fibres for which not enough data was available have been listed as Unclassified.
The Made-By Benchmark was first published quite a few years ago and there have been some important new developments including
– rising awareness of the impact of microfibres shed by most synthetic clothing when washed, and
– the emergence of many new technologies that assist with recycling or underpin innovative fabrics.
Unfortunately there is no industry wide, scientific, up to date assessment of the relative impacts of materials. We would like to see the fashion industry come together to develop such a tool, and for it to include systematic ways to assess the true benefits of innovative materials.