Determining and evaluation of carbon, water and energy footprints in industries in terms of sustainability: A case study for the textile industry

Ecological problems have continued to increase since the 1980s. Especially industrialization, urbanization, technological advances and rapid population growth are the problems that shake the world deeply. With the increase in industrialization, it has become important to analyze the environmental conditions of enterprises and to monitor and report their sustainability levels. With the increase in environmental problems, businesses have given importance to Water Footprint, Carbon Footprint and Energy Footprint studies caused by their own activities in this regard. In this context, there has been a need to establish measures to record, report and monitor the amount and properties of water used on the basis of process and operation, carbon emissions, energy consumption and to improve the results. While this master's thesis is being carried out, it is to propose a method that can be applied for Carbon, Water and Energy Footprint, to produce outputs and to introduce the application example. A sample facility was selected within the scope of the study and the application results were interpreted.52% of the carbon footprint in the bobbin yarn dyeing unit comes from Scope-1 emissions, 37% from Scope-2 emissions, 11% from Scope-3 emissions. The amount of carbon footprint released from the yarn dyeing unit to the atmosphere is 2.39 CO2e/kg yarn for 1 kg yarn dyeing. 44,73% of the water footprint released in the yarn dyeing unit on the bobbin appears as Blue Water Footprint, 55,18% as Gray Water Footprint and 0.09% as Green Water Footprint. It is calculated that 219 liter of water is consumed to dye 1 kg of yarn. It has been determined that the average monthly electricity consumption of the facility in 2021 is 718 GCal. SET values were observed at the most in January in 2021 and at least in March-April. As a result, it was concluded that the Carbon, Water and Energy Footprint results are a useful numerical guide for those who want to manage the sustainability process and can be applied in all industrial facilities. It was stated that more studies should be done in order for the researches in this area to be objective and consistent, and it was suggested that especially the data recording processes of the facilities should be standardized and databases should be created