Method and system for estimating ecological influence of textile fabric production

Abstract

A method, system and computer-readable storage medium for estimating an ecological impact of textile fabric production are provided. The ecological impact comprises a natural environmental impact. The method comprises: inputting composition of a textile fabric and a name of region where one or more steps of the textile fabric production are implemented; calling corresponding data from a database according to the input composition and the input name of region; and obtaining a score of the natural environment impact for the one or more steps of the textile fabric production according to a predetermined first operational rule and the data.

Claims

1. A method for estimating an ecological impact of textile fabric production, the ecological impact comprising a natural environment impact, the method comprising: inputting composition of a textile fabric and a name of region where one or more steps of the textile fabric production are implemented; calling corresponding data from a database according to the input composition and the input name of region; and obtaining a score of the natural environment impact of the one or more steps of the textile fabric production according to a predetermined first operational rule and the data.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising determining a comprehensive score of the natural environment impact of the textile fabric production from the obtained scores of the natural environment impact of the plural steps according to a predetermined second operational rule.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first operational rule comprises a formula EI.sub.i=(GW+WW+WC+EC+CM+SW), wherein EI.sub.i denotes the score of the natural environment impact of the ith step, GW denotes a greenhouse gas score item, WW denotes a wastewater score item, WC denotes a water score item, EC denotes an energy consumption score item, CM denotes a chemical consumption score item, and SW denotes a solid waste score item; wherein the score of the natural environment impact of the ith step is a weighted average of the score items.

4. The method according to claim 2, wherein the second operational rule comprises a formula EI.sub.0=.sub.i=1.sup.7EI.sub.i, wherein EI.sub.0 denotes the comprehensive score of the natural environment impact, EI.sub.1 denotes a raw material production step score item, EI.sub.2 denotes a fiber production step score item, EI.sub.3 denotes a yarn production step score item, EI.sub.4 denotes a fabric production step score item, EI.sub.5 denotes a dyeing step score item, EI.sub.6 denotes a finishing step score item, and Eh denotes a recycling step score item.

5. The method according to claim 3, wherein the first operational rule further comprises selecting a set of predetermined weights consisting of (.sub.n, n=1,2,3,4,5,6) to be applied to the score terms in the formula of the first operational rule respectively, wherein .sub.n ranges from 0.1 to 2.0.

6. The method according to claim 4, wherein the second operational rule further comprises selecting a set of predetermined weights consisting of (.sub.n, n=1,2,3,4,5,6,7) to be applied to the score terms in the formula of the second operational rule respectively, wherein .sub.n ranges from 0.1 to 2.0.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the ecological impact further comprises a human society impact and/or an animal right impact.

8. The method according to claim 7, further comprising a step of estimating the human society impact, the step comprising: calling a corresponding report in the database according to the input name of region, and outputting a title of the corresponding report as an estimation result.

9. The method according to claim 7, further comprising a step of estimating the animal right impact, the step comprising: calling a corresponding report in the database according to the input name of region, and outputting a title of the corresponding report as an estimation result.

10. The method according to claim 8, wherein the estimation result of the human society impact comprises employee treatment, career development and training, medical security, a working environment, occupational safety, community services and transparency.

11. The method according to claim 9, wherein the estimation result of the animal right impact comprises an animal experiment and animal abuse.

12. The method according to claim 1, wherein when the corresponding data is not called from the database, an average of all regions is used to replace the missing data.

13. The method according to claim 3, wherein before the data is substituted into the formula of the first operational rule for calculation, the data is standardized.

14. The method according to claim 2, further comprising: converting the obtained comprehensive score of the natural environment impact into a standard score.

15. The method according to claim 1, wherein the database contains data of the ecological impact of each step of the textile fabric production at different regions and may be updated via a network server.

16. The method according to claim 1, wherein the textile fabric comprises a textile fabric made of a single raw material and a textile fabric mixed of a plurality of raw materials.

17. A system for estimating an ecological impact of textile fabric production, the ecological impact comprising a natural environment impact, the system comprising: an input module for inputting composition of a textile fabric and a name of region where one or more steps of the textile fabric production are implemented; a processor configured to perform the following operations: calling corresponding data from a database according to the input composition and the input name of region; and performing an operation according to a predetermined first operational rule and the data, so as to obtain a score of the natural environment impact of the one or more steps of the textile fabric production; and an output module for outputting the score of the natural environment impact.

18. A computer-readable storage medium with computer instructions stored thereon, characterized in that the instructions, when executed by a processor, implement the following steps: calling corresponding data from a database according to input composition of a textile fabric and an input name of region where one or more steps of textile fabric production are implemented; and performing an operation according to a predetermined first operational rule and the data, so as to obtain a score of the natural environment impact of the one or more steps of the textile fabric production.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0055] The technical solution of the present invention may be better understood with accompanying drawings and the following description, in which:

[0056] FIG. 1 shows a flow chart of a method for estimating an ecological impact of textile fabric production according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention; and

[0057] FIG. 2 shows a schematic diagram of a system for estimating an ecological impact of textile fabric production according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

[0058] In order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present invention clearer, the present invention will be further described in detail below in combination with embodiments. It should be understood that, the embodiments described herein are only intended to illustrate but not to limit the present invention.

[0059] As shown in FIG. 1, a method for estimating natural environment impact of textile fabric production according to the present invention comprises the following steps. [0060] Step 1: inputting composition of a textile fabric and a name of region where one or more steps of the textile fabric production are implemented, wherein the textile fabric may be a textile fabric made of a single raw material, a textile fabric mixed of a plurality of raw materials or other textile fabrics, and the region where the one or more steps of the textile fabric production are implemented may be a country or district where the one or more steps of the textile fabric production are implemented, and the ecological impact generated by the textile fabric production in different countries or districts may be obviously different due to different production technical levels and environmental protection requirements of various countries or districts. [0061] Step 2: calling corresponding data from a database according to the input composition and the name of region. The data in the database may come from industrial, environmental and human statistical data of various districts/countries; reports from international organizations (for example, WHO, UN, WTO, OECD), such as Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data issued by a USA environmental protection organization; reports from non-governmental agencies (for example, environmental protection and right agencies), such as Flawed Fabrics The abuse of girls and women workers in the South Indian textile industry, published by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations and the Indian Committee of the Netherlands; academic reports/articles, such as Animal Ethics and Welfare in the Fashion and Lifestyle Industries, published by Green Fashion on Jan. 23, 2016, pp 49-122; reports (child labor, animal treatment, or the like), such as an adverse behavior toward sheep in a wool clipping process reported by nbcnews on Jul. 8, 2004; related data of business entities, or the like. The collected data is formed into a standard-order numeric matrix. The standard-order numeric matrix which may be used in the present invention may be obtained in various ways known in the art. In one example, the collected data is sorted in an increasing order to form a standard-order numeric matrix (for example, a numeric matrix from 0 to 100) corresponding to the numerical order of the collected data; the data may be standardized using the standard-order numeric matrix; that is, according to the input raw material and the name of country or region, corresponding standard data may be found from the standard-order numeric matrix, for example, corresponding ordinal values in the standard-order numeric matrix. For example, when the input raw material and name of country or district are cotton and China, in order to obtain the standard data corresponding to greenhouse gas in a raw material production step, if the system according to the present invention finds the ranking position of the standard data in the matrix to be 5th from the database, the standard data is 5. The inventor collected and calculated data on greenhouse gas emission, wastewater, water, energy consumption, chemical consumption and solid waste in the processes of cotton planting, picking, spinning, weaving, bleaching, dyeing and finishing in countries, such as China, USA, India, Pakistan, or the like, so as to obtain all data on each factor of different steps in different countries, thereby establishing the database. The database may be updated irregularly or regularly via a network server; when the corresponding data is not called from the database, an average of all the regions may be adopted to replace the missing data. [0062] Step 3: obtaining a score of the natural environment impact of the one or more steps of the textile fabric production according to a predetermined first operational rule and the data called from the database. The first operational rule comprises a formula (1) EI.sub.i=(GW+WW+WC+EC+CM+SW), wherein EI.sub.i denotes the score of the natural environment impact of the ith step, GW denotes a greenhouse gas score item, WW denotes a wastewater score item, WC denotes a water score item, EC denotes an energy consumption score item, CM denotes a chemical-consumption score item, and SW denotes a solid waste score item. Preferably, a set of predetermined weighted weights (.sub.n, n=1,2,3,4,5,6) is selected to be applied to each score item in the formula (1) of the first operational rule respectively, so as to optimize the score of the natural environment impact of each step in the production.

[0063] Preferably, the method for estimating the natural environment impact of the textile fabric production according to the present invention further comprises step 4, that is, determining a comprehensive score of the natural environment impact of the textile fabric production from the obtained scores of the natural environment impact of the plural steps according to a predetermined second operational rule. The second operational rule comprises a formula (2) EI.sub.0=.sub.i=1.sup.7EI.sub.i, wherein EI.sub.0 denotes the comprehensive score of the natural environment impact, EI.sub.1 denotes a raw material production step score item, EI.sub.2 denotes a fiber production step score item, EI.sub.3 denotes a yarn production step score item, EI.sub.4 denotes a fabric production step score item, EI.sub.5 denotes a dyeing step score item, EI.sub.6 denotes a finishing step score item, and EI.sub.7 denotes a recycling step score item. Preferably, a set of predetermined weights (.sub.n, n=1,2,3,4,5,6,7) is selected to be applied to each score item in the formula (2) of the second operational rule respectively, so as to optimize the comprehensive score of the natural environment impact. Preferably, the obtained comprehensive score of natural environmental impact is converted into a standard score, for example, by standardizing the maximum and minimum values of the obtained data among countries.

[0064] The method for estimating the ecological impact of the textile fabric production according to the present invention not only may comprise the method for estimating the natural environment impact, but also further comprises estimating a human society impact and an animal right impact. Herein, estimating the human society impact in the present invention may comprise: calling a corresponding report in the database according to the input name of region, and outputting a title of the corresponding report as an estimation result. Estimating the animal right impact in the present invention may comprise: calling a corresponding report in the database according to the input name of region, and outputting a title of the corresponding report as an estimation result. Since various factors in the human society impact and the animal right impact are difficult to calculate quantitatively and are unable to be calculated directly with the operational rule, thus, the present invention predetermine appropriate weights according to the importance of each factor in the human society impact and the animal right impact, such that an assessment result of the factor with a high weight is displayed in the above-mentioned output report preferentially, and thus, a user may conveniently perform an assessment more efficiently. Herein, the estimation result of the human society impact may comprise employee treatment, career development and training, medical security, working environment, occupational safety, community services and transparency; the estimation result of the animal right impact may comprise animal experiments, animal abuse and other inhuman animal treatment behaviors.

[0065] It should be noted that, in the art, it is difficult to select appropriate weights, the importance of different affecting factors (i.e., the above-mentioned score items) is required to be considered, and by applying appropriate weights to different affecting factors, an assessment result of the ecological impact which is more objective and accurate is obtained. For the natural environment impact, the weight is used as a weighted average factor in the formulas of the first and second operational rules to calculate a weighted average. For the human society impact and the animal right impact, the weight represents the importance of each factor in the output report, and the factor with a high weight is displayed preferentially. In the present invention, for each factor, the selected weight ranges from 0.1 to 2.0, wherein 0.1 represents the factor which is least important, and 2.0 represents the factor which is most important, that is, a larger value represents a higher importance. In the present invention, the preferred range of the weight of each factor is obtained with a large number of experiments and calculations.

[0066] The preferred ranges of the weights (.sub.n, n=1,2,3,4,5,6) of the score items in the formula (1) of the first operational rule comprise: the weight .sub.1 of the greenhouse-gas score item: 0.79-1.62; the weight .sub.2 of the wastewater score item: 0.55-1.23; the weight .sub.3 of the water score item: 0.72-1.31; the weight .sub.4 of the energy-consumption score item: 0.59-1.45; the weight .sub.5 of the chemical-consumption score item: 0.72-1.20; the weight .sub.6 of the solid-waste score item: 0.68-1.24. More preferably, the ranges of the weights (.sub.n, n=1,2,3,4,5,6) of the score items in the formula (1) may comprise: the weight .sub.1 of the greenhouse gas score item: 1.05-1.30; the weight .sub.2 of the wastewater score item: 0.75-1.05; the weight .sub.3 of the water score item: 0.90-1.10; the weight .sub.4 of the energy consumption score item: 0.80-1.20; the weight .sub.5 of the chemical consumption score item: 0.95-1.10; the weight .sub.6 of the solid-waste score item: 0.89-1.08.

[0067] The preferred ranges of the weights (.sub.n, n=1,2,3,4,5,6,7) of the score items in the formula (2) of the second operational rule comprise: the weight .sub.1 of the raw material production step: 0.61-1.89; the weight .sub.2 of the fiber production step: 0.61-1.20; the weight .sub.3 of the yarn production step: 0.28-1.20; the weight .sub.4 of the fabric production step: 0.46-1.20; the weight .sub.5 of the dyeing step: 0.74-1.85; the weight .sub.6 of the finishing step: 0.80-1.51; and the weight .sub.7 of the recycling step: 0.80-1.20. More preferably, the ranges of the weights (.sub.n, n=1,2,3,4,5,6,7) of the score items in the formula (2) may comprise: the weight .sub.1 of the raw material production step: 1.05-1.50; the weight .sub.2 of the fiber production step: 0.90-1.10; the weight .sub.3 of the yarn production step: 0.60-0.90; the weight .sub.4 of the fabric production step: 0.75-1.05; the weight .sub.5 of the dyeing step: 1.05-1.45; the weight .sub.6 of the finishing step: 1.05-1.25; the weight .sub.7 of the recycling step: 0.90-1.10.

[0068] The preferred ranges of the weights for the factors of the human society impact comprise: the employee treatment: 0.80-2.00; the career development and training: 0.03-1.21; the medical security: 0.03-1.75; the working environment: 0.79-2.00; the occupational safety: 0.79-2.00; the community service: 0.10-1.34; the transparency: 0.10-1.27. The more preferred ranges of the weights for the factors of the human society impact comprise: the employee treatment: 1.20-1.60; the career development and training: 0.40-0.90; the medical security: 0.50-1.20; the working environment: 1.10-1.50; the occupational safety: 1.15-1.55; the community service: 0.45-0.90; the transparency: 0.45-0.85.

[0069] The preferred ranges of the weights of the factors of the animal right impact comprise: the animal experiment and animal abuse: 0.74-1.21; the others: 0.79-1.26. The more preferred ranges of the weights of the factors of the animal right impact may comprise: the animal experiment and animal abuse: 0.85-1.05; the others: 0.90-1.10. The total-score assessment result obtained with the method according to the present invention has the meanings as follows: [0070] The comprehensive score of 0-20 indicates: among the fabrics covered by the present method, this fabric has little impact on the natural environment. The production of the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps has limited impact on the natural environment. According to the assessment result of the natural environment impact, it is strongly recommended to produce the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps. [0071] The comprehensive score of 21-40 indicates: among the fabrics covered by the present method, this fabric has minor impact on the natural environment. The production of the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps has certain impact on the natural environment. According to the assessment result of the natural environment impact, it is recommended to produce the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps. [0072] The comprehensive score of 41-60 indicates: among the fabrics covered by the present method, this fabric has medium impact on the natural environment. The production of the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps has general impact on the natural environment. According to the assessment result of the natural environment impact, it may or may not be recommended to produce the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps. [0073] The comprehensive score of 61-80 indicates: among the fabrics covered by the present method, this fabric has large impact on the natural environment. The production of the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps has remarkable impact on the natural environment. According to the assessment result of the natural environment impact, it is not recommended to produce the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps. [0074] The comprehensive score of 81-100 indicates: among the fabrics covered by the present method, the fabric has great impact on the natural environment. The production of the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps has serious impact on the natural environment. According to the assessment result of the natural environment impact, it is strongly not recommended to produce the fabric according to the selected raw materials and the selected production region of the steps.

[0075] For the preferred weight range and the scoring standard in the present invention, an expert team performs an open questionnaire assessment on the reliability of the weight and the scoring standard according to operation results. The expert team includes 5 university professors from Germany, Japan and China, 3 non-governmental organizations specializing in environmental-protection related projects, and 4 global textile garment companies. The assessment result affirms that the weight range in the present invention may be used as a reliable way for assessing the ecological impact comprehensively.

[0076] FIG. 2 shows a system for estimating an ecological impact of textile fabric production according to another aspect of the present invention, the system comprises an input module, a processor and an output module. Herein, the input module is configured to input composition of a textile fabric and a name of region where one or more steps of the textile fabric production are implemented. The processor is configured to perform the following operation: calling corresponding data from a database according to the input composition and the input name of region, and performing an operation according to a predetermined first operational rule and the data, so as to obtain a score of the natural environment impact of the one or more steps of the textile fabric production. The output module is configured to output the score of the natural environment impact.

[0077] Preferably, the processor in the system for estimating the ecological impact of the textile fabric production according to the present invention is further configured to perform a predetermined second operational rule, and determine a comprehensive score of the natural environment impact of the textile fabric production from the obtained scores of the natural environment impact of the plural steps; the output module is further configured to output the comprehensive score of the natural environment impact.

[0078] The present invention further relates to a computer-readable storage medium with computer instructions stored thereon, and the instructions, when executed by a processor, implement the above-mentioned steps of calling corresponding data from a database according to input composition and an input name of region; and obtaining a score of natural environment impact of the one or more steps of the textile fabric production according to a predetermined first operational rule and the data. Preferably, the instructions, when executed by the processor, further implement the following step: determining a comprehensive score of the natural environment impact of the textile fabric production from the obtained scores of the natural environment impact of the plural steps according to a predetermined second operational rule.

[0079] The computer-readable storage medium described herein may be a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. By way of example, and without limitation, the computer-readable storage medium may include RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk memories, magnetic disk memories or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which may be used to carry or store desired or computer-accessible program codes in the form of instructions or data structures. Combinations of the above-mentioned medium should also be included within the scope of the computer-readable storage medium.

[0080] The present invention is further described below by means of specific examples.

Embodiment 1Standardization of Data

[0081] The embodiment describes the process of standardizing data in the present invention in detail. The raw material in the embodiment is cotton, and the process of standardizing data of each factor of raw material production in China, USA, India and Pakistan is described.

[0082] The data called from the database according to the input name of the raw material and the raw material production step is shown in Table 1 below:

TABLE-US-00001 TABLE 1 Cotton USA China India Pakistan Raw material Including irrigation, chemical applications and fuel use Greenhouse gas kg GWP (100a) CO2 2.9800 11.3679 2.2538 3.1956 eq./kg CH4 kg/kg 0.0076 0.0061 N2O/NOx kg/kg 0.0227 0.0061 0.0684 0.2330 SO2 kg/kg 0.0040 0.0393 Others CH kg/kg 0.0050 COD kg/kg 0.0161 0.0003 PO4 kg/kg 0.0543 PMs kg/kg 0.0015 0.0217

[0083] Values corresponding to the greenhouse gas are taken as an example in Table 1. Values of other factors, such as wastewater, water, energy consumption, chemical consumption, or the like, may be processed similarly.

[0084] Then, the obtained data is standardized, that is, the called data corresponds to the standard-order numeric matrix, thereby finding out the corresponding standard data (i.e., the ordinal value of the position in the matrix), as shown in the following Table 2:

TABLE-US-00002 TABLE 2 Cotton USA China India Pakistan Including irrigation, chemical applications and fuel use Greenhouse gas 13 50 10 14 Water 43 100 100 91 Wastewater 0 0 0 0 Chemical consumption 1 1 1 1 Energy consumption 14 13 23 6

[0085] Table 2 exemplarily shows the standardized values of the factors of greenhouse gas, water, wastewater, chemical consumption and energy consumption in the raw material production step in USA, China, India and Pakistan with cotton as the raw material. After collected, the data of all the raw materials and the factors of all the production steps in all the countries where the data is collected is sorted in the increasing order to form the standard-order numeric matrix corresponding to the numerical order of the collected data, and the data may be standardized using the standard-order numeric matrix with the above-mentioned steps.

Embodiment 2Natural Environmental Impact

[0086] In order to more clearly show the process of a method for obtaining the ecological impact in the present invention, the weights in the formula (1) of the first operational rule and the formula (2) of the second operational rule are set to 1.0 in the embodiment 2, and specific calculation steps are as follows.

[0087] The input raw material is: 100% organic cotton; the production countries or districts of each step are as follows: raw materials production-USA; fiber production-USA; yarn production-China; fabric production-China; dyeing-China; finishing-China; recycling-China.

[0088] The data called from the database according to the input name of the raw material and the input production countries of each step are shown in Table 3:

TABLE-US-00003 TABLE 3 Natural environment impact Total Green-house Waste Energy Chemical Solid Production flow score gas water Water consumption consumption waste Raw material production n/a 2.7000 0.0112 68.0737 4.7007 0.0000 0.9093 Fiber production n/a 0.1110 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.1583 1.7000 Yarn production n/a 4.0800 0.0000 0.0000 3.4900 0.0000 0.1820 Fabric production n/a 0.9876 0.0000 0.0000 0.1080 0.0000 0.0220 Dyeing n/a 1.5049 43.0000 46.7500 0.7331 1.5443 0.4883 Finishing n/a 0.2624 0.4625 0.9140 0.3081 0.0625 0.0000 Recycling n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a Overall n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

[0089] Results of standardization of the scores in Table 3 are shown in the following Table 4.

TABLE-US-00004 TABLE 4 Natural environment impact Total Green-house Waste Energy Chemical Solid Production flow score gas water Water consumption consumption waste Raw material production 12 3 10 0 0 14 Fiber production 1 0 0 0 0 1 Yarn production 18 0 0 2 0 10 Fabric production 5 0 0 1 0 1 Dyeing 7 2 4 6 1 3 Finishing 2 1 1 0 1 1 Recycling 5.0 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a Overall n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

[0090] According to the formula (1) of the first operational rule, the weight of each score item is selected to be 1.0, and the scoring result of each step of the natural environment impact shown in Table 5 is obtained by calculation.

TABLE-US-00005 TABLE 5 Natural environment impact Total Green-house Waste Energy Chemical Solid Production flow score gas water Water consumption consumption waste Raw material production 7 12 3 10 0 0 14 Fiber production 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 Yarn production 5 18 0 0 2 0 10 Fabric production 2 5 0 0 1 0 1 Dyeing 4 7 2 4 6 1 3 Finishing 1 2 1 1 0 1 1 Recycling 5 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

[0091] According to the formula (2) of the second operational rule, the weight of each score item is selected to be 1.0, and the comprehensive score of the natural environment impact is calculated to be 25.

Embodiment 3Natural Environmental Impact

[0092] For comparison with the embodiment 2 to reflect the objectivity and accuracy of the result obtained with the method and system according to the present invention, in the embodiment 3, the raw material is pure cotton, the production country of each step is China, and the weights are selected to be 1, as in the embodiment 1. The final results are shown in the following Table 6:

TABLE-US-00006 TABLE 6 Pure cotton Production process Country Impact score Impact Raw material production China 37/100 Greenhouse gas 50 56 Water 100 Wastewater 54 Solid waste 0 Chemical consumption 1 Energy consumption 13 Fiber production China 2/100 Yam production China 5/100 Fabric production China 2/100 Dyeing China 4/100 Finishing China 1/100 Recycling China 5

Embodiment 4Natural Environmental Impact

[0093] The raw materials input in the embodiment 4 are full cotton and cotton blended materials. The embodiment has the same production country or district of each step as the embodiment 2, but the weights in the formula (1) of the first operational rule are selected as follows: the weight .sub.1 of the greenhouse-gas score item is 1.08; the weight of the wastewater score item is 0.99; the weight .sub.3 of the water score item is 1.00; the weight .sub.4 of the energy-consumption score item is 0.98; the weight .sub.5 of the chemical-consumption score item is 0.97; the weight .sub.6 of the solid-waste score item is 0.98. The weights in the formula (2) of the second operational rule are selected as follows: the weight .sub.1 of the raw material production step is 1.16; the weight .sub.2 of the fiber production step is 0.94; the weight .sub.3 of the yarn production step is 0.83; the weight .sub.4 of the fabric production step is 0.89; the weight .sub.5 of the dyeing step is 1.12; the weight .sub.6 of the finishing step is 1.09; the weight .sub.7 of the recycling step is 1.00, and the resulting comprehensive score of the natural environmental impact is 43.78.

Embodiment 5Human Society Impact and Animal Right Impact

[0094] The human society impact and the animal right impact are related to the production implementation country or district of each step. The embodiment 5 has the same production country or district of each step as the embodiments 2 and 4. The weights for the factors of the human society impact are selected as follows: the employee treatment: 1.31; the career development and training: 0.82; the medical security: 0.97; the working environment: 1.23; the occupational safety: 1.24; the community service: 0.72; the transparency: 0.72. The weights of the factors of the animal right impact are selected as follows: the animal experiment and animal abuse: 0.99; others: 1.01. The output results are arranged according to the weights, the factor with a larger weight is listed preferentially, and the output results are shown in the following Table 7.

TABLE-US-00007 TABLE 7 Human society impact USA Employee treatment Wage: compliance with the minimum wage standard is low in the Los Angeles area. Working time: some reports show up to 20 added hours per week in the Los Angeles area. Employee welfare: there is no federal law to guarantee paid sick leave; there is no law to guarantee paid maternity leave. Employee right: agricultural workers are not allowed to constitute or join in guild organizations. Equal treatment: one report states that 26% of workers have witnessed or experienced verbal or physical abuse. Illegal worker: investigations into Latino Americans and Asians have shown that some organizations traffic unregistered workers who are forced to work in USA. Occupational safety No special case. Working environment Investigations have shown that a third of workers in the Los Angeles area lack clean drinking water at workplaces. Medical security No special case. Career development No special case. and training Community service No special case. Transparency No special case. China Employee treatment Wage: a total of 61 wage arrears events are reported from January to December, 2016. Working time: forced overtime working is common; work clearance and rest cannot be guaranteed during busy periods. Employee welfare: some reports show that sick leave is required to be approved by a superior; some reports show that pregnant workers may be dismissed, and only a few workers enjoy state-specified maternity leave. Employee right: worker guild organizations are restricted by laws strictly. Equal treatment: different treatment of female employees is common. Illegal worker: practice plans cover child labor hiring situations; Occupational safety No special case. Working environment No special case. Medical security No special case. Career development No special case. and training Community service No special case. Transparency No special case. Animal right impact USA Others No special case. Animal experiment No special case. and animal abuse China Others No special case. Animal experiment No special case. and animal abuse

[0095] Result Discussion:

[0096] In the embodiments 2 and 3, different raw materials (i.e., the 100% organic cotton in the embodiment 2 and the pure cotton in the embodiment 3), different production regions and the same weight are adopted, and the natural environment impact has different resulting scores of 25 and 56; in the embodiments 2 and 4, different raw materials (i.e., the 100% organic cotton in the embodiment 2 and the full cotton and cotton blended materials in the embodiment 4), different weights and the same production region are adopted, and the natural environment impact also has different resulting scores of 25 and 43.78.

[0097] The relevant results are presented in order of importance of the affecting factors in the embodiment 5.

[0098] The expert team performs the open questionnaire assessment on the reliability of the results of the embodiments 2 to 5. The expert team includes 5 university professors from Germany, Japan and China, 3 non-governmental organizations specializing in environmental-protection related projects, and 4 global textile garment companies. The assessment results affirm that the results of the embodiments 2 to 5 are reliable and objective, and the obtained values objectively reflect the ecological impact generated by the corresponding raw materials and the country where the production is implemented.

[0099] Although the present invention has been described above with reference to the embodiments of the method and system for estimating the ecological impact of the textile fabric production, as well as the computer-readable storage medium, it is conceivable that those skilled in the art can derive many variations, and thus, the variations easily conceived by those skilled in the art are recognized as a part of present invention. The scope of the present invention is defined in the attached claims.