# What are the emissions of mercerising cotton fabric per metre?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/fabric-mercerising-emissions-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.

- [Caustic soda per tonne](https://senseible.earth/answers/caustic-soda-carbon-footprint-per-tonne)
- [Stenter fuel per metre](https://senseible.earth/answers/stenter-fuel-and-co2-per-metre-of-fabric)

Sources: [GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard](https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-value-chain-scope-3-standard), [IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2: Energy](https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol2.html)

Last reviewed 2026-10-22.