IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v16y2023i1p82-d1304503.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Traceability Platform for Monitoring Environmental and Social Sustainability in the Textile and Clothing Value Chain: Towards a Digital Passport for Textiles and Clothing

Author

Listed:
  • Luís Alves

    (Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Praça General Barbosa 44, 4900-348 Viana do Castelo, Portugal)

  • Miguel Sá

    (CITEVE—Centro Tecnológico das Indústrias Têxtil e do Vestuário, Rua Fernando Mesquita 2785, 4760-034 Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal)

  • Estrela Ferreira Cruz

    (Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Praça General Barbosa 44, 4900-348 Viana do Castelo, Portugal
    ALGORITMI Research Lab, Escola de Engenharia–Universidade do Minho, Campus de Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal)

  • Toni Alves

    (Centro de Computação Gráfica, Campus de Azurém, Edifício 14, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal)

  • Marcelo Alves

    (INFOS-Informática e Serviços S.A., Rua Veloso Salgado 971 1011, 4450-801 Leça da Palmeira, Portugal)

  • João Oliveira

    (CITEVE—Centro Tecnológico das Indústrias Têxtil e do Vestuário, Rua Fernando Mesquita 2785, 4760-034 Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal)

  • Manuel Santos

    (Centro de Computação Gráfica, Campus de Azurém, Edifício 14, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal)

  • António Miguel Rosado da Cruz

    (Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Praça General Barbosa 44, 4900-348 Viana do Castelo, Portugal
    ALGORITMI Research Lab, Escola de Engenharia–Universidade do Minho, Campus de Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal)

Abstract

Textile and clothing is one of the most important industrial sectors, not only due to the significant number of jobs generated, but also because it addresses one of the people’s fundamental needs (clothing). It is, however, a sector with a huge global environmental impact, and also an important negative social impact, especially in developing countries. Sustainability in the textile and clothing value chain is a known issue, concerning both environmental and economic-social facets of sustainability. One way to improve sustainability in this sector is by measuring and monitoring the environmental, economic and social impacts of activities along the value chain and, ultimately, computing an environmental and circular score for each batch of textile and clothing product, and an economic and social score for each involved company, reflected in their products. The consumer will then have the opportunity and responsibility for selecting products with the least negative environmental, economic and social impact. This article aims to propose a decentralized traceability platform for the textile and clothing value chain, based on blockchain technology, for tracing textile product batches and activities, along the value chain, classifying them with a score, which measures their environmental and social impact. The environmental, economic and social impact scores are based on a set of proposed indicators. The results are assessed through two test scenarios, namely a face towel (home textile) and a T-shirt (clothing).

Suggested Citation

  • Luís Alves & Miguel Sá & Estrela Ferreira Cruz & Toni Alves & Marcelo Alves & João Oliveira & Manuel Santos & António Miguel Rosado da Cruz, 2023. "A Traceability Platform for Monitoring Environmental and Social Sustainability in the Textile and Clothing Value Chain: Towards a Digital Passport for Textiles and Clothing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-24, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2023:i:1:p:82-:d:1304503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/1/82/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/1/82/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tina Wiegand & Martin Wynn, 2023. "Sustainability, the Circular Economy and Digitalisation in the German Textile and Clothing Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-30, June.
    2. Richard Baskerville, 2008. "What design science is not," European Journal of Information Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(5), pages 441-443, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anuradha Colombage & Darshana Sedera, 2025. "The Fallacies in Chain-of-Custody in Sustainable Supply Chain Management: A Case Study from the Apparel Manufacturing Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-27, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fahimeh Khatami & Francesca Romana Rinaldi & Carlo Salvato & Alberto Ferraris, 2024. "Country‐level analysis of the relationships between sustainability and the textile–clothing–leather–footwear industries," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(8), pages 8668-8678, December.
    2. Slavenka Petrak & Maja Mahnić Naglić & Martina Glogar & Antoneta Tomljenović, 2025. "Assessment of Textile Material Properties and the Impact of Digital Ink-Jet Fabric Printing on 3D Simulation as a Sustainable Method for Garment Prototyping," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(4), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Doyle, Cathal & Luczak-Roesch, Markus & Mittal, Abhinav, 2019. "We need the open artefact: Design Science as a pathway to Open Science in Information Systems research," OSF Preprints ye6xp_v1, Center for Open Science.
    4. Zare, Fateme & Jakeman, Anthony J. & Elsawah, Sondoss & Guillaume, Joseph H.A., 2024. "Bridging practice and science in socio-environmental systems research and modelling: A design science approach," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 492(C).
    5. Ahmed Abbasi & Jeffrey Parsons & Gautam Pant & Olivia R. Liu Sheng & Suprateek Sarker, 2024. "Pathways for Design Research on Artificial Intelligence," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(2), pages 441-459, June.
    6. Nagle, Tadhg & Doyle, Cathal & Alhassan, Ibrahim & Sammon, David, 2020. "The Research Method we Need or Deserve? A Literature Review of the Design Science Research Landscape," OSF Preprints yjbd7_v1, Center for Open Science.
    7. Simina Teodora Hora & Constantin Bungau & Paul Andrei Negru & Andrei-Flavius Radu, 2023. "Implementing Circular Economy Elements in the Textile Industry: A Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(20), pages 1-24, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2023:i:1:p:82-:d:1304503. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.