A life cycle assessment (LCA)-based approach to guiding an industry sector towards sustainability: the case of the Swedish apparel sector Sandra Roos a, * , Bahareh Zamani b , Gustav Sandin c , Greg M. Peters b , Magdalena Svanstr € om b a Swerea IVF, PO Box 104, SE-431 22 M€ olndal, Sweden b Chalmers University of Technology, Chemical Environmental Science, Kemiv€ agen 10, SE-412 96 G€ oteborg, Sweden c SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, Brinellgatan 4, Box 857, SE-501 05 Borås, Sweden article info Article history: Received 4 November 2015 Received in revised form 22 April 2016 Accepted 23 May 2016 Available online 1 June 2016 Keywords: Life cycle assessment Social assessment Life cycle interpretation Planetary boundaries Actor-oriented advice Textile abstract The environmental challenges associated with consumption of textiles have generally been investigated on product level in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies. For social sustainability aspects, social hotspot analysis has instead been applied on the textile sector level. The aim with the industry sector approach developed by the authors was to enable assessment of different interventions in terms of how they contribute to reaching targets for environmental and social sustainability, on the sector level. The approach was tested in a case study on the Swedish apparel sector. The industry sector approach consists of three steps that address three different questions: 1) What is the current sustainability performance of the sector? 2) What is an acceptable sustainability performance for the sector? 3) Are proposed interventions enough to reach an acceptable sustainability performance? By answering these questions, it is possible to measure performance in relation to sector level targets and learn which types of interventions (technical improvements, behavioral changes, new business models, etc.), and which actors (manufacturers, retailers, consumers, authorities, etc.) that can poten- tially provide the greatest improvements. By applying the approach in the case study, conclusions could be drawn on whether specific interventions appear to be sufficient or not in relation to the set envi- ronmental targets. The influence of the interventions in relation to reaching targets for social sustain- ability was found to be the most difficult to measure due to lack of data. To spur the industry sector's stakeholders to actualize the full potential of the most effective environmental interventions, a scheme for structured evaluation of LCA results directed towards these prospective actors was developed. Based on the results from the study, actor-oriented advice could be provided. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In control systems engineering, control of a system is achieved by means of interventions based on feedback on how the system performs in relation to targets (Wiener, 1961). Without such feed- back, control cannot be achieved and the managers of the system are like blind drivers of a car. Within global efforts to promote sustainable development, the importance of measuring perfor- mance in relation to targets has recently been highlighted in the evaluation of the work done to reach the millennium development goals (UN, 2015). Without the targets that were set up in New York in 2000 and without the continuous efforts to monitor progress, it is believed that much less of the positive change that has been seen would have happened. Targets and performance assessments can thus be very important in achieving change. For sustainable development, targets need to be expressed in a relevant way to different actors, and the actors need guidance in monitoring the performance in relation to targets and in measuring the effect of interventions that they have the power to make (Baumann et al., 2011). Such an approach would need to address the specific situa- tion of the actor (after all, the driver only needs to direct the car and not the whole traffic system). This paper addresses sustainable development at the level of (national) industry sectors. It presents an approach to assessing * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: sandra.roos@swerea.se (S. Roos), zamanib@chalmers.se (B. Zamani), gustav.sandin@sp.se (G. Sandin), petersg@chalmers.se (G.M. Peters), magdalena.svanstrom@chalmers.se (M. Svanstr€ om). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.05.146 0959-6526/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Cleaner Production 133 (2016) 691e700