Alliance for flax-linen enhances environmental transparency

The Alliance for European Flax-Linen & Hemp, based in Paris, is dedicated to offering accurate environmental impact data for European flax fibers. In a significant collaboration, they have partnered with leading databases, including a key alliance with Ecoinvent based in Zurich, Switzerland. Ecoinvent is a lifecycle inventory database, providing transparent information on the environmental impacts of various products and services. The latest release of the Ecoinvent database in November 2023 now includes data on both long and short European flax-linen fibers.

In response to the environmental and climate challenges, societal expectations, and upcoming regulations, industries and brands are recognizing the need for robust environmental data across their value chains. This is particularly crucial for raw materials, enabling the calculation of impacts on semi-products, components, and finished goods. The recent inclusion of flax-linen data in the Ecoinvent database addresses this need, allowing players in the industry to calculate the environmental impacts of products using certified European flax fiber.

The released Ecoinvent data, covering both inventory and impact, empowers participants in the flax-linen sector, including industries and brands, to assess the impacts of their products crafted from certified European flax fiber. The data reflects cultivation and processing practices in Western Europe (France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), encompassing factors like minimal irrigation, low pesticide and fertilizer use, dew retting, and more. The Alliance is actively working to construct average data at the EU level for each transformation process of long and short fibers, ensuring comprehensive information for the flax-linen sector and its end users.