How do I calculate the carbon footprint of innerwear such as briefs and vests?

Weigh the knitted fabric in each piece, including cutting waste, and multiply by your fabric supplier's per-kg figure. Add elastic, thread, stitching and packing, then divide the unit's electricity and fuel by pieces passed in the same period.

Materials

• Knitted fabric per piece, from marker efficiency and GSM.
• Elastic waistband, thread and labels.
• Ask the knitting and processing unit for a per-kg figure; dyeing is usually its largest energy use.

Making

• Flatlock, overlock and elastic attaching machines.
• Pressing or folding, and the compressor if pneumatic machines are used.
• Boxes or poly packs of three or five.

Per piece

Report per piece by style. A pack of three is three pieces plus one pack's packaging.

Worked example: innerwear unit per piece (one month)

• Electricity: 36,000 kWh x 0.710 = 25,560 kg CO2
• Pieces passed: 400,000
• Plant total: 25,560 / 400,000 = 0.0639 kg CO2 per piece
• Add fabric and elastic for the full figure

Inputs are illustrative; use your own bills and production records.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads the plant's electricity bills (CEA grid factor 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh, CO2 Baseline Database version 21.0) and fuel invoices (IPCC 2006 defaults) into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, the plant-level input to a per-unit figure. Bought-in materials go to the supplier evidence trail; product reports are self-declared drafts.

• Product carbon footprint calculator
• Knitted fabric footprint per kg
• Garment stitching emissions per piece
• Textile industry

Sources: GHG Protocol Product Standard, ISO 14067:2018, Carbon footprint of products (iso.org), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel defaults), CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 21.0

Last reviewed 2026-10-20.