Production Stage
Production Stage
Water Stress and Pollution
Water use and pollution also take place during clothing production. About 20% of industrial water pollution is due to garment manufacturing, while the world uses 5 trillion liters (1.3 trillion gallons) of water each year for fabric dyeing alone, enough to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Source: World Resource Institute
"There is a joke in China that you can tell the 'it' color of the season by looking at the color of the rivers." In China, the factory of the world, it is estimated that 70 percent of the rivers and lakes are contaminated by the 2.5 billion gallons of wastewater produced by the textile industry.
Source: RiverBlue
Cotton is the most common natural fiber used to make clothing, accounting for about 33 percent of all fibers found in textiles. Cotton is also a very thirsty crop, requiring 2,700 liters of water—what one person drinks in two-and-a-half years—to make one cotton shirt.
And almost 11,000 to make a pair of jeans.
In areas already facing water stress, cotton production can be particularly damaging. In Central Asia, for instance, the Aral Sea has nearly disappeared because cotton farmers draw excessively from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. (Check out WRI’s Aqueduct tool to see where cotton production and water risks intersect.)
Source: World Resources Institute
Pesticides Pollution
Cotton is considered the world's dirtiest crop due to its heavy use of pesticides. Aldicarb, cotton's second best-selling insecticide and most acutely poisonous to humans and wildlife, is still used in 25 countries, a single drop of aldicarb, absorbed through the skin can kill an adult.
Hazardous pesticides associated with global cotton production represent a substantial threat to global freshwater resources. Hazardous cotton pesticides are now known to contaminate rivers in USA, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Australia, Greece and West Africa. In Brazil, the world’s 4th largest consumer of agrochemicals, researchers tested rainwater for the presence of pesticides. 19 different chemicals were identified of which 12 were applied to cotton within the study area
CO2 Emissions
The carbon footprint of a garment largely depends on the material. While synthetic fibers like polyester have less impact on water and land than grown materials like cotton, they emit more greenhouse gasses per kilogram. A polyester shirt has more than double the carbon footprint of a cotton shirt (5.5 kg vs. 2.1 kg, or 12.1 pounds vs 4.6 pounds). Polyester production for textiles released about 706 billion kg (1.5 trillion pounds) of greenhouse gases in 2015, the equivalent of 185 coal-fired power plants' annual emissions.
Source: World Resources Institute
Manufacturing Waste
The world creates 40 billion square meters of leftover textile per year, almost enough to cover the entire Republic of Estonia with waste.
Source: Reverse Resources. How Much Does Garment Industry Actually Waste?
Consumption Stage
Great Contaminated Outdoors is a documentary by Greenpeace about the contents of PFCs, the hazardous chemicals used to make outdoor gear waterproof, found in snow and water samples of remote areas.
PFCs, the Hazardous Chemicals Contaminate Water
PFCs are man-made compounds of carbon and fluorine and are so stable that they can hardly be removed from the environment, if at all. According to Greenpeace, they accumulate in blood, and have even been found in the blood of Arctic polar bears and newborn human babies. A Swedish government report from Spring 2015 states that PFOS, PFOA and some related substances are classified as ‘reproductively toxic, carcinogenic and harmful to the thyroid’
Source: Ethical Consumer
Microfibers in Water and Food Chain
During use, it has been recently estimated that half a million tonnes of plastic microfibres shed during washing ends up in the ocean and ultimately enters the food chain. In other words, we may end up eating our own clothes.
Post-Consumption Stage
Image: Remake
Used Clothing on the Landfills
With limited recycling options to recover reusable fibers, almost 60% of all clothing produced is disposed of within a year of production (ending in landfill or incineration). To put that into context, that is one rubbish truck per second to landfill. It has been estimated that less than 1% of the material used to produce clothing is recycled within the clothing industry, with around 13% recycled for use in other areas.
Source: Nature