The textile group Nextil has developed, together with technology company Xain, a tool that enables automated, certified, and highly affordable calculation of a garment’s carbon footprint, reducing the measurement cost from thousands of euros to just a few cents per item.
The technology aims to help textile-sector companies adapt to Europe’s new sustainability regulations, such as the upcoming Digital Product Passport (DPP) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will require greater traceability and transparency of products’ environmental impact.
Until now, calculating and certifying a garment’s carbon footprint required specialized consulting processes that could range from €5,000 to €15,000 per item. The automation developed by Nextil reduces that cost to just a few cents per garment, making it feasible for companies of any size to measure their environmental impact.
Impact Measurement from the Label
The system enables generating a certified estimate of the carbon footprint under the international ISO 14067 standard using only basic product information, such as its composition or manufacturing processes.
This enables companies with varying levels of digitalization to begin measuring their products’ environmental impact immediately. The tool also allows calculating the CO₂ footprint for entire collections and conveying that information to the end consumer, who is increasingly concerned about the sustainability and circularity of the products they buy. At the same time, it provides companies with an objective basis to identify opportunities to reduce emissions in their supply chains, work with their suppliers on concrete improvements, and anticipate compliance with new environmental regulations being rolled out internationally.
Additionally, the tool is designed to progressively integrate with real supply chain data. As the various players in the sector connect to the system, companies will be able to replace statistical estimates with direct information drawn from their production processes.
Toward a Common Measurement Standard
The solution integrates into the industrial data space developed by IndesIA in collaboration with the Community of Madrid and funded by the Next Generation funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Administration, an initiative aimed at facilitating secure information exchange between companies and advancing the digitization of industry.
One of the project’s objectives is to move toward a homogeneous measurement system that allows transparent and verifiable comparison of the environmental impact of products, avoiding methodological fragmentation in emissions measurement.
Although the development has been applied initially to the textile sector, the technology architecture is designed to be replicated in other industrial sectors.
