PEFCR Methodology

Pasera uses the Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) for Apparel & Footwear v3.1 to calculate the environmental impact of textile products.

What is PEFCR?

PEFCR is the EU’s official methodology for calculating product environmental footprints. It standardizes how impact is measured across 16 categories, with climate change (kgCO2e) as the primary metric.

How Pasera calculates impact

For each production batch, the total CO2 equivalent is calculated from six lifecycle stages:

Total CO2e =
  Materials:   weight_kg × material_emission_factor
+ Energy:      kWh × grid_factor × (1 - renewable%)
+ Water:       liters × 0.000344 kgCO2e/L
+ Transport:   tonne_km × transport_mode_factor
+ Waste:       waste_kg × 0.350 kgCO2e/kg
+ Chemicals:   product_kg × 1.20 kgCO2e/kg (if used)

Per-unit CO2e = Total / quantity

Materials

Each material type has a specific emission factor (kgCO2e per kg). See the full emission factor table.

Key insight: organic cotton produces 36% less CO2e than conventional cotton. Recycled polyester produces 67% less than virgin. Material choice is usually the biggest lever a brand has.

Energy

Grid electricity emission factors vary dramatically by country — a factory in France (0.052 kgCO2e/kWh, nuclear-dominated) produces 11x less CO2 per kWh than Bangladesh (0.623 kgCO2e/kWh, gas-dominated).

Renewable energy (solar, wind) is credited at 0.02 kgCO2e/kWh (lifecycle emissions of the infrastructure).

Transport

Sea freight is by far the lowest-carbon option (0.016 kgCO2e/tonne-km). Air freight is 38x higher (0.602). For products shipped from Asia to EU, choosing sea over air can reduce transport emissions by 95%.

Defaults

When factory data is missing, Pasera uses conservative defaults:

• Transport: sea freight, 15,000 km (Asia to EU average)
• Energy grid: 0.500 kgCO2e/kWh (global average)

These defaults are flagged as secondary data in the score breakdown.

Category benchmark

The textile apparel average is approximately 8.1 kgCO2e per unit (based on a ~250g basic cotton garment using secondary data). Products scoring below this are better than average.