Environmental Sustainability Evaluation of Apparel Product: A Case Study on Knitted T-Shirt

The work reported in this paper presents the assessment of environmental performances of selected branded apparel T-Shirt products made by Bangladesh. The study is based on a standard evaluation tool named Higg Index which is basically used widely to measure the environmental sustainability of various apparel products. Higg Index is an internal self-assessment tool created by the outdoor apparel industry and Nike’s apparel environmental design tool which aims to aggregate information on the environmental performance of products. The Index considers performance across the full life-cycle of a product, including impacts from “input materials, manufacturing, packaging, transportation, use, and end-of-life.” Selected apparel branded T-Shirt products from S. Oliver, BUTex-Innovation, PUMA, Esprit, Aarong, and Yellow were taken into consideration. The results indicate that newly developed ecofriendly T-shirt and foreign branded products named S. Oliver, PUMA, and Esprit gained higher score but local branded product like Aarong and Yellow gained lower score in terms of environmental sustainability based on Higg Index assessment tool. Moreover, many weaknesses and opportunities for improvement of both local and foreign branded T-Shirt products have been identified and suggested which would eventually lead the fashion designer, apparel manufacturer, stakeholder, and consumer towards greener apparel products. 1. Introduction Sustainability is the major concern in the age of modern world. For textile and apparel sector, this has been a burning issue for many related concerned bodies. Over the past few years, increasing awareness of the environmental and social concerns surrounding the fashion industry have led to a rise in the implementation of sustainability initiatives. There has been a growing concern over apparel brands in improving their environmental impact and the social responsibility throughout their supply chains. Environmental sustainability refers to the ability of something to continue without upsetting earth’s ecological balance. Sustainable apparel products can be defined as a part of the growing design philosophy and trend of sustainability, the goal of which is to create a system which can be supported indefinitely in terms of environmentalism and social responsibility [1]. Environmental sustainability in business refers to longevity, but in terms of which natural resources the production process might draw upon, how resources are used and replenished, the overall impact of the final production on the environment, and where the product ends up