The textile sector is widely recognized for the significant environmental impacts of its resource-intensive and polluting value chains. Cashmere fibres are a particularly critical case, as their production depends strongly on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Extensive grazing by cashmere goats in fragile regions such as Mongolia contributes to soil desertification, habitat degradation and declining species richness. Circular economy strategies that reduce reliance on land and virgin resources therefore represent a promising pathway to mitigate these pressures. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a key method for evaluating potential benefits and impacts of such strategies; yet detailed and region-specific LCA data for cashmere fiber production and recycling remain scarce. This study addresses this gap by providing disaggregated, reproducible, process-based life cycle inventories for both virgin and recycled (MCashmere®) cashmere fibers, based on literature and primary industrial data. LCA is applied to provide the environmental impact profile of the virgin and recycled cashmere fiber production, and to analyze potential benefits of circular economy strategies in the textile sector using the circular footprint formula (CFF). The findings show that a circular system including recycled cashmere fibres consistently exhibit lower environmental impacts than a linear one relying on virgin fibres. The magnitude of the benefits depends on the methodological choice, i.e. from 2-3 times by applying the CFF to more than 670 times in a cut-off system where the recycled fibre’s value chain excludes the upstream burden of virgin fibre production. Impact reductions are mainly driven by market related parameters, such as the substitution of virgin fibres with recycled ones (parameter A, determined by the elasticity between demand and supply of fibres) and by increased recycled content (parameter R1). In contrast, virgin cashmere production remains highly impactful due to extensive land use, water consumption, and agricultural inputs. Despite methodological limitations of the CFF, the results robustly indicate that recycled cashmere aligns with circular economy principles by reducing dependence on virgin resource extraction.
