Shawmut Corporation, a supplier of materials and textiles, has launched a new lifecycle assessment tool called Shawmut Insights. Said to provide an unprecedented level of visibility into the true environmental impact of products, the system was designed and developed in-house specifically for textile markets. Shawmut Insights can model product-specific, cradle-to-grave impacts, from raw materials to end of life, across the company’s full range of warp knit headliner composites, laminated fabrics and other high-performance textile systems.
“For the first time, designers and engineers can explore how each material choice – down to the fiber source or lamination configuration – affects environmental performance,” said Nicholas Hammond, product sustainability and compliance manager at Shawmut. “Shawmut Insights was built for flexibility and granularity. It allows us to trace every material flow through our supply chain and pinpoint the exact drivers of environmental impact at each stage of a product’s lifecycle.
With precise, verified data, automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers can measure and report Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from Shawmut products with greater confidence, supporting sustainability goals and material selection decisions that align with evolving ESG requirements.
The Shawmut Insights system adheres to ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006 standards and is aligned with the Product Category Rules for nonwoven fabrics and fabrics. Impact Assessment outputs follow EPD EF 3.1 and include four measurements of Global Warming Potential, providing consistent and transparent reporting across all evaluated products. Shawmut’s background model and comprehensive LCA report were reviewed by an independent US sustainability consulting firm, verifying conformance with these standards.
Reliable, product-specific LCA data has long been a challenge for the automotive sector, especially for custom textile variants not covered by published, standardized datasets. As a result, many Scope 3 calculations have relied on low-quality, spend-based emission factors.
Said James Wyner, CEO of Shawmut Corporation, “Until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to capture accurate, variant-level environmental data for interior materials. With Shawmut Insights, we’re giving our partners the ability to design sustainability into every layer of the vehicle interior – linking environmental performance with material innovation.”
In another recent sustainability initiative, Evonik and AMSilk have extended their partnership for the production of sustainable biotech silk materials
