Quantifying the Norwegian households' clothing system and its enviromental impacts for a transition towards a more circular economy

Norway has the ambition to be at the forefront of the transition towards a Circular Economy. To achieve this the country needs to drastically increase its circularity metric, which in 2020 indicated that only 2.4% of the total amount of materials, input to the economy every year, were cycled back. In addition, previous analyses of the Norwegian consumption have identified household consumption as one of the main contributors to Norway’s environmental footprint. Within their consumption, clothing has stood out as one of the commodities driving their environmental impacts. The clothing industry has been recognized for its linearity, which increases the pressure on the resources been used, and links the industry to environmental problems such as climate change, and chemical toxicity. This has made necessary to call for a disruptive change in the industry. Increasing clothing utilization and their lifespan, together with new business model that can satisfy the clothing needs in a more sustainable way, have been highlighted among the most relevant strategies to achieve this change. The potential of these strategies lies in their capacity to close, slow or narrow down the loops in the system, decreasing the demand for new garments, and consequently the environmental impacts associated to them. Therefore, aiming to have a better understanding of the Norwegian households’ clothing consumption, this master’s thesis investigates the flows of clothing within Norway, and its environmental impacts for the year 2018. This is done using a Material Flow Analysis (MFA), as this tool provides a systemic approach to identify the flows and processes within the system. In addition, MFA allows to reach a level of detail that enables the analysis of the composition of these flows, which is highly relevant to understand the consumption patterns of clothes, and the opportunities for improving the circularity of the system. Furthermore, the results from the MFA are used as base to elaborate a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the system on SimaPro. With the elaborated model, the impacts the system has on climate change, water scarcity and energy consumption, are analyzed. Lastly, the results from the MFA are modified to investigate how increasing the share of circular business models in the system can impact the flows and its environmental impacts. Results from the MFA indicate that the overall consumption of garments for the year 2018 was of 62 400 tonnes of clothes, and that 7% of this consumption corresponded to garments recirculating within the Norwegian households’ clothing system. The consumption of used garments was dominated by articles such as trousers and pullovers, whereas the consumption of new garments was dominated by articles such as underwear, which are considered as not suitable for reuse. The environmental impacts associated to the consumption, use and disposal of garments led to a climate change impact of 317 kg CO2 per capita (3% of the Norwegian households’ carbon footprint). When increasing the circularity of the system all the environmental impacts were reduced in approximately 8%. The results obtained in this research, through the integrated approach using MFA and LCA, provide a good understanding of the complexity in the system and allows the identification of improvement opportunities, that are relevant in the transition towards a more circular economy