What are the emissions of mercerising cotton fabric per metre?
Mercerising treats cotton with caustic soda, then washes it with hot water. Emissions come from the caustic soda used, which is a Scope 3 purchase, and from steam for washing and caustic recovery, which is boiler fuel in Scope 1. Divide both by metres processed.
Per metre
- Caustic soda consumed, net of what is recovered.
- Steam for washing and the recovery plant, as boiler fuel.
- Machine electricity at 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh.
Caustic recovery
Recovering caustic cuts chemical purchases but uses steam, so count both sides.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads the energy invoices behind the making stage into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, and keeps material invoices on the Scope 3 trail. Material factors come from your supplier or a named database and are labelled with their source, so the product figure can be traced line by line.
Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2: Energy
Last reviewed 2026-10-22.