The fashion industry is “incredibly wasteful and harmful to the environment.” That is the message that designer Stella McCartney, and an increasing number of other brands, have taken to addressing. Given its focus on fast, cheap, and trend-specific fashion that is essentially meant to be disposable, fashion industry often gets a bad rap for it the damage it does to the environment. From growing cotton to manufacturing textiles, water is an essential component. We take a look at the relationship between fashion manufacturing and H20 …
20 percent – The average amount of global industrial water pollution that can be tied to garment manufacturing. (World Resources Institute).
25 – The number of recycled plastic bottles (reclaimed from the ocean) that activewear brand Girlfriend Collective uses to make each pair of its leggings. (TFL).
85 percent – The percentage of water used in textile processing that goes into dying the fabrics, which, in many cases, leads to run off, thereby polluting nearby water sources. (Cotton, Inc.).
715 gallons – How much water it takes to produce the cotton needed for one t-shirt – that is almost three years’ worth of drinking water. (WWF).
1,468 gallons – The average amount of water that Reformation saves per pair of its eco-friendly denim. (TFL).
1,800 gallons – The approximate amount of gallons of water to grow enough cotton to produce just one pair jeans. (Tree Hugger).
1,900 – The number of individual fibers that can be rinsed off a single synthetic garment (namely, one made from polyester) and end up in our oceans. (The Guardian).
100,000 – The number of pairs of jeans that Levi recently manufactured with one of its Chinese suppliers using 100 percent recycled water. (Levis).
1 million – The number of pairs of sneakers made from reclaimed ocean plastic that adidas sold in 2017. Each pair of shoes reuses 11 plastic bottles. (CNBC)
25 billion gallons –The water required for one year’s worth of global textile production (including cotton farming). (Elle MacArthur Foundation).
1.3 trillion gallons – The amount of water used each year for fabric dyeing alone. (World Resources Institute).
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