Textile Exchange has published the fashion industry’s first dedicated life cycle assessment (LCA) of cashmere, quantifying the fiber’s greenhouse gas emissions and water use while warning of mounting pressure on herding communities in Mongolia and China, the two countries that supply the vast majority of the world’s raw cashmere.
The report, released this week, is the third instalment in a seven-part LCA series the non-profit sustainability group launched in March with a cotton study, followed by polyester in June. Cashmere, along with nylon, leather hide, Responsible Wool Standard wool and Responsible Mohair Standard mohair, was selected for the series based on the scale of industry demand and the scarcity of credible, transparent impact data covering its production.
Textile Exchange’s cashmere assessment applies the group’s “LCA+” methodology, which extends beyond conventional greenhouse gas and water accounting to capture indicators such as biodiversity loss, soil health, animal welfare and herder livelihoods. The approach reflects concerns raised in the organization’s August 2025 position paper on LCA integrity, which cautioned that raw fiber-to-fiber comparisons and poorly documented assumptions have long distorted how sustainability claims are made across the textile sector.
Mongolia holds roughly 27 million cashmere goats, supplying close to 40% of the world’s raw fiber, with China accounting for a similar or larger share. Herders in both countries have faced years of pressure to expand herd sizes to meet rising global demand for cashmere knitwear, a dynamic that researchers have repeatedly linked to overgrazing, desertification and declining vegetation cover across the Mongolian steppe. The new study adds quantified emissions and water-use figures to that pattern, while flagging the socioeconomic squeeze facing herding families as raw fiber prices remain volatile and processing value continues to concentrate downstream in China, Italy and other manufacturing hubs.
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Each study in Textile Exchange’s LCA series is led by an independent third-party consultant and reviewed by an outside expert panel before publication, a structure designed to reinforce scientific credibility following past criticism of inconsistent fiber impact data circulating in tools such as the Higg Materials Sustainability Index. Textile Exchange has said data from the series will be submitted to major industry databases, including Higg MSI, Ecoinvent and the World Apparel and Footwear Life Cycle Assessment Database, for use as updated proxy data where brands lack primary supply chain figures of their own.
Beth Jensen, Textile Exchange’s chief impact officer, has said the broader LCA series is intended to close data gaps that have made it difficult for brands to model and track emissions accurately at the raw material stage, while the LCA+ lens is meant to give companies a fuller picture of impacts that traditional assessments routinely miss.
The cashmere findings arrive as brands and industry bodies face growing scrutiny over the credibility of sustainability claims tied to animal fibers, following years of debate over grazing intensity, land degradation and the welfare standards applied across cashmere supply chains. Organizations including the Sustainable Fibre Alliance have pushed to define verifiable sustainability benchmarks for the sector, though gaps in monitoring infrastructure across remote herding regions have made independent verification difficult.
Textile Exchange’s remaining LCA studies, covering Responsible Wool Standard wool, leather hide and nylon, are expected through the rest of 2026 and into 2027, completing a data set the organization says will underpin more accurate sourcing decisions across the industry’s highest-volume raw materials. As with its cotton and polyester studies, Textile Exchange has cautioned against using the cashmere figures to draw direct comparisons against other fibers or datasets, noting that differing system boundaries and methodological assumptions between studies limit their comparability.