Basis for conducting Life Cycle Assessment of Brazilian silk yarn manufacturing

¹ Universidade Estadual de Maringá UEM, Department of Design and Fashion, Cianorte Regional Campus, Cianorte, Paraná, Brazil
² Universidade Estadual de Maringá UEM, Department of Production Engineering, Maringá, Paraná, Brazil
³ Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Department of Engineering Technology and Didactics, Lautrupvang 15, Building Ballerup / Room E2.12, DK-2750 Ballerup, Denmark

^* Corresponding author: smbdamasceno@uem.br

Abstract

There has been a growing concern around environmental impacts worldwide, and the implications of the production of silk yarn should not be disregarded. On that note, this study presents the basis for conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the silk yarn production system in Brazil. The result is a qualitative inventory for the silk yarn production process, with an overview of the most relevant input and output. The product system of this work can be considered gate-to-gate and comprised from the receipt of the fresh silk cocoons to the sale of the silk yarn in skeins, which is one phase of the silk yarn production system. Brazil is one of the world’s largest producers of silk, but in the yarn manufacturing phase, there is only one spinning company. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies on silk yarn manufacturing phase under Brazilian conditions in the existing literature until the time this research is being written.