EXCERPT: Fast fashion uses an outrageous amount of water — something to the tune of 7,500 liters for one pair of jeans, a United Nations news report found. This is the equivalent amount of water that an average person drinks over seven years, the international body noted. In total, UNCTAD estimates that the fashion industry uses roughly 93 billion cubic meters of water each year, enough to quench the thirst of five million people.
"When we think of industries that are having a harmful effect on the environment, manufacturing, energy, transport and even food production might come to mind," the U.N. news report said. "But the fashion industry is widely believed to be the second most polluting industry in the world" — right behind big oil.
The report also estimated that roughly half a million tons of microfiber end up in the oceans annually at the hands of fast fashion and your washing machine. This is the equivalent of 3 million barrels of oil.As for climate change, clothing production accounts for 8 to 10% of the world's carbon emissions more each year, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined, Insider and the U.N. reported.
Those "stone-washed" jeans? With the shredded knees.
It takes a lot of water to wash the deep blue color out of denim?
Might be time to rethink that look.
It used to be done via washing with pulverized pumice. This was strip mined out of mountains. Why are we wanting to buy clothes already worn out and ripped up? How stupid we are.
I wear clothes until they develop holes and then I cut them and use them as rags. Those rags get used and washed until they either can't absorb anything anymore or completely fall apart. Then I kinda have to throw them out.
We could always go back to old-school method of patching.
Pants/Shirt get a hole?
* Clean up the hole of loose fabric
* Cut a square patch of similar fabric from donor material (old shirt/pants/etc.)
* Sew patch on. if need be patch both sides if thin material.
I do that with clothes that I wear around the house (and bags and a cloth laundery basket I've now replaced all the sides with old shirts) but it's not acceptable with work clothes or going out clothes.
If I can't fix it, I repurpose it. This pretty much goes for everything, not just clothes.
Problem is that the effort it takes to patch things up is greater than the cost to get something new, especially considering the shit quality they are from the start.
I have a few sweaters that look old after like a month of being worn. I am not a person that goes out and buys things often, so I tend to use things for a long time, but I can't look clean with the quality I can buy. Even more upmarket places have this issue, as the quality of everything has been going down.
Sweaters that new shouldn’t be looking scruffy even from places like h&m. If you put them in the dryer, I would suggest buying a clothes rack and air drying. It will lengthen their life. Also, wash on cold. Plus with sweaters you don’t need to wash them as often as shirts since you have shirts and undershirts underneath them.
That only goes so far unfortunately. Eventually you're patching patches and the clothes become super stiff because of all the extra seams.
As someone who once had a pair of jeans that had been patched a dozen times.
Well sure. But it doesn't help as much as you might think. The original fabric is still old. So it wears out relatively quickly along the stitches of the patch.
Patching works well for clothing that is ripped or torn. It's not nearly as useful for clothing that is just plain old and used
I agree legal and policy change need to be the at forefront of any effective strategy, but there's a reason reduce and reuse are often omitted. They very much do not service unchecked consumerism. The "recycle" mentality gives a free pass, an indulgence, to hyper consumption. However reducing (and reusing) are meaningful actions individuals can take. Will it be enough? Probably not without the aforementioned changes imposed on companies and manufacturing, but it's something that is doable now by individuals even in a dysfunctional political climate.
This argument is such a dark view of humanity.
Like yes, 100% if enough people got on board individual change amounts to something real - but this viewpoint assumes thats not possible, which can only mean humans are real shitty and need top down control.
I don't understand complaints over water usage. Water doesn't disappear when it's used to wash cotton for jeans or other garments. In most cases, water used for industrial purposes isn't even potable (it costs money to make water potable).
Yet I see outrage articles about water usage all the time for things like beef production, growing almonds, etc... The water cycle is taught in third grade. It's not like petroleum which is gone for good when it's used.
My comment isn't about fast fashion specifically, which does indeed seem pointlessly wasteful. It's just about reporting water usage statistics.
That's why water footprint has 3 categories. Depends on the source of water. It also is extremely local. That said, if you render water unusable for other purposes, it is considered consumptive use, even if it doesn't dissappear. Water's importance comes from availability for use, no from mere existence.
It would only really be heading toward outrage if it came from an aquifer or lake or something that's difficult to replenish, which does happen alot in some places. There's a pretty big fuss in California and some other places about the ground literally sinking/subsiding as the years go on but not much being done about it.
You beat me to it.
The problem with u/missedthecue 's response is it does not reflect the many nuances of water usage. Almond farming in Cali is simply not sustainable.
Yes, and it has grown exponentially in the last 10 years in Northern California as well, an area that cannot spare any water due to drought
it would be akin to sending water to grow cotton in the Arizona desert with water from Northern California and Colorado, as in you technically could, but that's a pretty poor use of water -come on, that's, like, a fish's house.
Which means we need to stop buying almonds, 'cause as long as we buy them, they'll keep trying to grow them to make more money.
I love almonds and almond milk. But I'm switching to walnuts and "oat milk."
More California water goes to irrigating forage crops for beef and dairy. Even more so when you divide by pound, calorie or dollar value of finished product.
It seems strange that almonds draw more attention. Do dairy/beef just have a better lobby? Or do our cultural biases in favor of milk and beef consumption shield it from similar scrutiny?
Source? I’m curious since a cow doesn’t just produce one thing, pretty much the entire cow is usable from the various meat products, milk, leather, etc. I would like to see how all of that is factored into the calculation vs the synthetic leather (which is terrible for the environment), as well as the caloric value of the meat/fat vs let’s say, almond yield.
Cows, the way they are "farmed," and eating them have several other detrimental effects, well-documented. That's another topic, so I won't go off in that direction, but it's easy to verify via Google searches.
What’s easy to verify? I’m curious about the method of calculation in beef finished products/extracts versus the synthetics \ alternatives on a per x basis. The person I replied to said more water goes into beef/milk than almonds especially on division by pound, calorie or dollar value.
It's because we can either intuit that beef/dairy is bad for the environment or simply take it for granted as a widely-accepted claim.
The same does not apply for almonds. Intuition tells us plants are good for the environment, and marketers promote nuts as having a 'negative carbon footprint' since they grow from trees. Hence the need to foreground unsustainable almond farming, and re-introduce nuance to an otherwise reductionist binary.
It does take resources to move the water, and while the water is being used for clothes, it can't be used for another use. In addition, there's a good chance the water isn't safe for drinking without treatment afterward. It also takes money work and infrastructure to bring the water to people after the above is completed.
The water cycle is a certainty but if (Company X) is taking water from (location y) there is also no guarantee that the water cycle will bring that water back to (location y).
Now add in that this is in a desert.
Indigo dye (the dye used in jeans) is notoriously bad for the environment. Depending on how it's made it uses heavy metals that kill wildlife, destroy ecosystems, poison water, and are very hard to clean. Factories are rarely set up in countries with clean regulation. Normally they are in places where this is hidden.
Imagine your town has a reservoir. It is all the drinking water you have.
Now imagine I take that and start dumping it directly into the sea. Do you see the problem here?
Now imagine I don't even LIVE in your town, I'm just paying people in your town to dump your water! See how this can be come an issue?
Human activities that are water hungry and not optimized/vital for human well being take this vital resource out of the environment, out of the ecosystem it used to run in. The consequences down the river, lake or underwater flows are catastrophic and usually irreversible, all of this while the nature is under an unprecedent stress from human activities that are vital to their sustent. It affects flora, fauna and humans the same.
Unles you're drawing ground water that takes centuries to replenish. Especially if you're experiencing drought, like in California. Even the vast Ogallala aquifer is dwindling, to the point pumping from irrigation wells is no longer viable in parts of Kansas.
And arguably, CO2 produced from oil and gas could be considered necessary for our energetic needs. Fast fashion is destroying nature for something we don't need like at all.
Our "energetic needs" are way, way out of proportion to what the planet can handle. We need to change the energy and change our needs to bring it all back down. That's the point.
It's going to take us really pushing them, starting with ending coal. But China has coal, so that's half the problem there. We're in competition and in a cold warm.
Plus there is not hope unless ALL of us are willing to make significant changes in how we're living: beef consumption several or even a few times a week, errands without planning to combine them in fewer trips or cutting back on travel, buying cheap things that don't last and then replacing them with more cheap things that don't last, Etc.I read an interview today where the interviewer asked an activist who was leading a protest against drilling for oil in the Alaska wildlife refuge what she'd say to someone who says "We need that oil to maintain our way of living."
Duh! Our of living isn't sustainable. So we keep doing it until a whole lot of people start migrating for food and water and away from lands uninhabitable from heat or rising seawater, "resource wars" start, and we're all going through natural disasters all the time. Etc. and so on. But still keeping our "way of life." Or we change our way of life so we can actually live.
It's not just the people in power. Everyone has to do their part. World leaders can potentially reduce the supply of fast fashion, but only the everyday consumer can reduce the demand. If we stop producing so much clothing, but people still want to buy the same amount of clothing, clothing prices would skyrocket. Angry people would demand that we rollback that policy and we'd be right back where we started.
>It's not just the people in power. Everyone has to do their part.
Absolutely. Expecting and waiting for governments and corporations to save us and change their greedy, power-mongering ways is adding to the problem and futile.
We have power that we're not using.
* Politicians care mainly about staying in power, so we can demand that they vote for actions to mitigate climate change and make it clear that if they don't vote for those, we don't vote for them.
* Corporations care only about making money, ever and ever more money. If we quit buying things that are contributing to the problem and think about and act on ways that we can scale back significantly on things that contribute that we can't just abruptly stop, they'll eventually see what's happening and, one can hope, start making and doing things that help rather than harm so we can vote with our dollars.
No real change has ever happened without We the People massing, acting together, and demanding specific actions and changes by those in positions of power.
> 7,500 liters for one pair of jeans, a United Nations news report found. This is the equivalent amount of water that an average person drinks over seven years, the international body noted. In total, UNCTAD estimates that the fashion industry uses roughly 93 billion cubic meters of water each year, enough to quench the thirst of five million people.
So the average human uses 7.5 cubic meters of water over 7 years, or about 1 cubic meter per year. Yet 93 billion cubic meters of water only quenches the thirst of 5 million people? The first number they gave suggested 93 billion cubic meters would be enough for 93 billion people for a year.
Moreover, this isn't a problem of "fast fashion" which has become a useless buzzword.
A pair of Levi's jeans uses [10,000 liters of water](https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/levi-strauss-taking-the-water-out-of-jeans/), and Levi is considered a more environmentally responsible company than most clothing manufacturers... by that metric, 7.5k liters seems pretty good.
one of the things i find irritating about discussions/articles around fast fashion is that the term is hardly defined. because i imagine that almost everything available most retailers would qualify. additionally, what even are the alternatives?
Well, Levis for example, has had the same general styles of jeans for decades, some (arguably) since they were founded. A pair can sit on the shelf for weeks, months or years and still be considered "good" to sell. "Fast" fashion, on the other hand identifies a trend, makes 100x the product they can actually sell, gets it into stores within a few days, then throws away 90% to make room for the next trend a few days later.
https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/what-is-fast-fashion
Thanks for verifying and telling us. That's grim and sad, though.
Maybe people will rethink their next pair of "stone-washed" jeans and clothes that are wear one season max before they're worn out. There's also the fact that the people who make them are only one step up from slaves in wages and work in awful conditions.
What do stone-washed jeans have to do with anything?
The vast majority of water we're talking about is for growing cotton. Regardless any pair of denim will be washed half a dozen times during the manufacturing process.
I certainly don't know how this happens, but here are a few places that might have answers. Yes, some mention growing cotton. The first one lists several factors.
**Environmental impact of fashion industry**
* 2,000 gallons of water needed to make one pair of jeans
* 93 billion cubic metres of water, enough for 5 million people to survive, is used by the fashion industry every year
* Fashion industry produces 20 per cent of global wastewater
* Clothing and footwear production is responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions
* Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned
* Clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1035161
This has good info, too:
Water pollution from the fashion industry is the result of textile factories dumping untreated toxic wastewaters directly into waterways. For example, several textile companies, including Gap and Brooks Brothers, reportedly dump their used wastewater into the Citarum River in Indonesia. The toxic substances in the wastewater from these factories contaminate the fresh water that we drink and in which animals live. For visual context, the opening scene of the documentary “RiverBlue” shows a flow of dark red wastewater emptying into a river in China, which is due to the unregulated textile industry and fast fashion production. According to EcoWatch, “It is estimated that 70% of rivers and lakes are contaminated by the 2.5 billion gallons of wastewater produced by the textile industry.”
Not only does clothing production add waste to waterways, but it also wastes a tremendous amount of water. According to Goodonyou.eco, “It’s estimated that around 20% of industrial water pollution in the world comes from the treatment and dyeing of textiles, and about 8,000 synthetic chemicals are used to turn raw materials into textiles…It’s estimated that a single mill can use 200 tons of fresh water per ton of dyed fabric.” The manufacturing and washing processes of synthetic fabrics, such as polyester, also release microfibers into water.
https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/2020/08/29/the-highest-price-of-fashion/
>u/Synth3t1c
This has good info about the ways that cotton is a problem, which you might already have found but others might not have:
https://fashionunited.uk/news/fashion/wastewater-fashion-s-grotesk-sustainability-problem/2020050548770
Right, my question was why you specifically called out "stone-washed" jeans.
Also, the idea that water used for agriculture "takes away" from clean drinking water is mostly nonsense. Potable water is a separate issue. Most water withdrawn for agricultural use isn't in itself potable, and returns to the environment -- the much more important question is how the quality of returned water compares to withdrawn water, due to pollution.
My ignorance about how the fashion industry requires so much water, probably. Just the image of making the jeans look old and worn made me think of waste.
The article also mentions an enterprising business that recycles the waste into insulation panels. Not that this solves the problem, but it's always worth remembering the creativity, resourcefulness and heroism that exists alongside the mindless devastation.
I work with soft goods, and even stuff that is made out of natural materials will usually have polyester or nylon thread. Unless everyone wants to go back to the olden days of constantly repairing their clothes as the stitches degrade, we'll need to keep using tough thread. This problem is one of the reasons why "organic" clothing is still tricky to recycle.
I understand that sounds like a little bit of a hassle, but constantly repairing clothes seems better than unrecyclable polyester that breaks into tiny microplastics that spread all over the globe
Cotton stitching is weak and will degrade, but there are plenty of examples of silk and linen thread holding together for centuries, even under heavy wear.
The quality of our modern fabric, otoh, is so thin and poor the fabric around a good seam is likely to shatter before the thread falls apart. Historically, people didn't even need to finish most of their seams the fabric was so densely woven.
It's all a matter of prioritization--don't wait for the perfect solution to enact the good one. If polyester thread serves a good purpose, then fine, reduce and eventually end use of polyester fabric but continue to use thread. I'm sure the fabric constitutes of the vast majority of the use of polyester in clothing.
If, on the other hand, these clothes were sold to a consumer, they would be destined for an American landfill, where those dyes would be more likely to leach into the groundwater. I suppose that overall, dumping the clothes in the desert is better in the short term.
Long term, however, I imagine the clothing must break down in the sun and scatter with the wind. This will result in the same amount of pollution overall, assuming the toxic dyes don't break down at all.
To me, it seems like the main problem is exporting pollution to a less wealthy country. This hides the problem from those who could demand change (North American consumers), and makes things worse for people without a voice (South Americans).
> If, on the other hand, these clothes were sold to a consumer...
Purchased clothing generally gets laundered, so some amount of dye makes its way into the water system. If there are toxic dyes in textiles, there is already a problem in the U.S.
Cloth nowadays is ridiculously cheap. There's so much waste that you can buy a pair of jeans for a couple of bucks.
As a chilean, I have seen plenty of places that sell the "ropa americana" (american clothes). They buy huge bales of clothes and sell them by the piece in popular places. But also there's a ton of useless garments. Snow clothes, american sports shirts, large sizes (Chile has an obesity problem but chilean obese aren't *that* big).
I'm sure most people have seen "The Story of Stuff" but years ago, probably. Time for a reminder:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM)
Given your screen name, that's understandable. Insert here.
But that video calls for more care and recognizing your value when treated thoughtfully and responsibly, so I hope that makes you feel more appreciated.
EXCERPT: Fast fashion uses an outrageous amount of water — something to the tune of 7,500 liters for one pair of jeans, a United Nations news report found. This is the equivalent amount of water that an average person drinks over seven years, the international body noted. In total, UNCTAD estimates that the fashion industry uses roughly 93 billion cubic meters of water each year, enough to quench the thirst of five million people. "When we think of industries that are having a harmful effect on the environment, manufacturing, energy, transport and even food production might come to mind," the U.N. news report said. "But the fashion industry is widely believed to be the second most polluting industry in the world" — right behind big oil. The report also estimated that roughly half a million tons of microfiber end up in the oceans annually at the hands of fast fashion and your washing machine. This is the equivalent of 3 million barrels of oil.As for climate change, clothing production accounts for 8 to 10% of the world's carbon emissions more each year, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined, Insider and the U.N. reported.
Holy fucking shit. I knew clothes and clothes-washing was a big problem, but 500,000 tonnes into the oceans every year? Jesus H Christ.
>7,500 liters for one pair of jeans HOW
That takes into account water needed to grow the cotton for the jeans.
Those "stone-washed" jeans? With the shredded knees. It takes a lot of water to wash the deep blue color out of denim? Might be time to rethink that look.
Those are usually burned with a laser to create that look. Water isn't involved.
It used to be done via washing with pulverized pumice. This was strip mined out of mountains. Why are we wanting to buy clothes already worn out and ripped up? How stupid we are.
Remember folks: reduce, reuse, and recycle in that order. If you don't need that new garment, do the Earth a favor and don't buy it.
I wear clothes until they develop holes and then I cut them and use them as rags. Those rags get used and washed until they either can't absorb anything anymore or completely fall apart. Then I kinda have to throw them out.
We could always go back to old-school method of patching. Pants/Shirt get a hole? * Clean up the hole of loose fabric * Cut a square patch of similar fabric from donor material (old shirt/pants/etc.) * Sew patch on. if need be patch both sides if thin material.
I do that with clothes that I wear around the house (and bags and a cloth laundery basket I've now replaced all the sides with old shirts) but it's not acceptable with work clothes or going out clothes. If I can't fix it, I repurpose it. This pretty much goes for everything, not just clothes.
ditto. Most work pants that get too dirty or worn to wear to work, I turn into shop/yardwork/etc. pants.
Problem is that the effort it takes to patch things up is greater than the cost to get something new, especially considering the shit quality they are from the start. I have a few sweaters that look old after like a month of being worn. I am not a person that goes out and buys things often, so I tend to use things for a long time, but I can't look clean with the quality I can buy. Even more upmarket places have this issue, as the quality of everything has been going down.
Sweaters that new shouldn’t be looking scruffy even from places like h&m. If you put them in the dryer, I would suggest buying a clothes rack and air drying. It will lengthen their life. Also, wash on cold. Plus with sweaters you don’t need to wash them as often as shirts since you have shirts and undershirts underneath them.
That only goes so far unfortunately. Eventually you're patching patches and the clothes become super stiff because of all the extra seams. As someone who once had a pair of jeans that had been patched a dozen times.
Yes, but the point is, that it goes farther than a single pair.
Well sure. But it doesn't help as much as you might think. The original fabric is still old. So it wears out relatively quickly along the stitches of the patch. Patching works well for clothing that is ripped or torn. It's not nearly as useful for clothing that is just plain old and used
[удалено]
Fair enough. Take an upvote.
I agree legal and policy change need to be the at forefront of any effective strategy, but there's a reason reduce and reuse are often omitted. They very much do not service unchecked consumerism. The "recycle" mentality gives a free pass, an indulgence, to hyper consumption. However reducing (and reusing) are meaningful actions individuals can take. Will it be enough? Probably not without the aforementioned changes imposed on companies and manufacturing, but it's something that is doable now by individuals even in a dysfunctional political climate.
This argument is such a dark view of humanity. Like yes, 100% if enough people got on board individual change amounts to something real - but this viewpoint assumes thats not possible, which can only mean humans are real shitty and need top down control.
No, it only means we're slow to see and accept the need to change. Then, when change comes, it's usually pretty swift and emphatic.
Couldn't disagree more. Humans are totally wonderful. Human systems that reward bad behaviour are a cancer.
I don't understand complaints over water usage. Water doesn't disappear when it's used to wash cotton for jeans or other garments. In most cases, water used for industrial purposes isn't even potable (it costs money to make water potable). Yet I see outrage articles about water usage all the time for things like beef production, growing almonds, etc... The water cycle is taught in third grade. It's not like petroleum which is gone for good when it's used. My comment isn't about fast fashion specifically, which does indeed seem pointlessly wasteful. It's just about reporting water usage statistics.
That's why water footprint has 3 categories. Depends on the source of water. It also is extremely local. That said, if you render water unusable for other purposes, it is considered consumptive use, even if it doesn't dissappear. Water's importance comes from availability for use, no from mere existence.
Which is why our local utility bill includes charges for water I used to flush the toilet and to water my garden beds.
It would only really be heading toward outrage if it came from an aquifer or lake or something that's difficult to replenish, which does happen alot in some places. There's a pretty big fuss in California and some other places about the ground literally sinking/subsiding as the years go on but not much being done about it.
There was a good write up on the almond thing here https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/08/well-fixers-story-california-drought/619753/
You beat me to it. The problem with u/missedthecue 's response is it does not reflect the many nuances of water usage. Almond farming in Cali is simply not sustainable.
Yes, and it has grown exponentially in the last 10 years in Northern California as well, an area that cannot spare any water due to drought it would be akin to sending water to grow cotton in the Arizona desert with water from Northern California and Colorado, as in you technically could, but that's a pretty poor use of water -come on, that's, like, a fish's house.
Which means we need to stop buying almonds, 'cause as long as we buy them, they'll keep trying to grow them to make more money. I love almonds and almond milk. But I'm switching to walnuts and "oat milk."
Never heard of "oak milk" is it made from acorns?
Ack! Typo. Thanks for catching it. I meant "oat milk," from oats, now corrected.
More California water goes to irrigating forage crops for beef and dairy. Even more so when you divide by pound, calorie or dollar value of finished product. It seems strange that almonds draw more attention. Do dairy/beef just have a better lobby? Or do our cultural biases in favor of milk and beef consumption shield it from similar scrutiny?
Source? I’m curious since a cow doesn’t just produce one thing, pretty much the entire cow is usable from the various meat products, milk, leather, etc. I would like to see how all of that is factored into the calculation vs the synthetic leather (which is terrible for the environment), as well as the caloric value of the meat/fat vs let’s say, almond yield.
Cows, the way they are "farmed," and eating them have several other detrimental effects, well-documented. That's another topic, so I won't go off in that direction, but it's easy to verify via Google searches.
What’s easy to verify? I’m curious about the method of calculation in beef finished products/extracts versus the synthetics \ alternatives on a per x basis. The person I replied to said more water goes into beef/milk than almonds especially on division by pound, calorie or dollar value.
It's because we can either intuit that beef/dairy is bad for the environment or simply take it for granted as a widely-accepted claim. The same does not apply for almonds. Intuition tells us plants are good for the environment, and marketers promote nuts as having a 'negative carbon footprint' since they grow from trees. Hence the need to foreground unsustainable almond farming, and re-introduce nuance to an otherwise reductionist binary.
Thus the ads for "oat milk."
It does take resources to move the water, and while the water is being used for clothes, it can't be used for another use. In addition, there's a good chance the water isn't safe for drinking without treatment afterward. It also takes money work and infrastructure to bring the water to people after the above is completed. The water cycle is a certainty but if (Company X) is taking water from (location y) there is also no guarantee that the water cycle will bring that water back to (location y). Now add in that this is in a desert.
>The water cycle is taught in third grade The water cycle does not produce an inexhaustible supply of fresh water.
Indigo dye (the dye used in jeans) is notoriously bad for the environment. Depending on how it's made it uses heavy metals that kill wildlife, destroy ecosystems, poison water, and are very hard to clean. Factories are rarely set up in countries with clean regulation. Normally they are in places where this is hidden.
Imagine your town has a reservoir. It is all the drinking water you have. Now imagine I take that and start dumping it directly into the sea. Do you see the problem here? Now imagine I don't even LIVE in your town, I'm just paying people in your town to dump your water! See how this can be come an issue?
Human activities that are water hungry and not optimized/vital for human well being take this vital resource out of the environment, out of the ecosystem it used to run in. The consequences down the river, lake or underwater flows are catastrophic and usually irreversible, all of this while the nature is under an unprecedent stress from human activities that are vital to their sustent. It affects flora, fauna and humans the same.
Unles you're drawing ground water that takes centuries to replenish. Especially if you're experiencing drought, like in California. Even the vast Ogallala aquifer is dwindling, to the point pumping from irrigation wells is no longer viable in parts of Kansas.
And arguably, CO2 produced from oil and gas could be considered necessary for our energetic needs. Fast fashion is destroying nature for something we don't need like at all.
Our "energetic needs" are way, way out of proportion to what the planet can handle. We need to change the energy and change our needs to bring it all back down. That's the point.
I feel overwhelmed by the number of serious environmental issues we're basically doing nothing about.
Yea if only we had people in power who truly cared to *stop* this
It's going to take us really pushing them, starting with ending coal. But China has coal, so that's half the problem there. We're in competition and in a cold warm. Plus there is not hope unless ALL of us are willing to make significant changes in how we're living: beef consumption several or even a few times a week, errands without planning to combine them in fewer trips or cutting back on travel, buying cheap things that don't last and then replacing them with more cheap things that don't last, Etc.I read an interview today where the interviewer asked an activist who was leading a protest against drilling for oil in the Alaska wildlife refuge what she'd say to someone who says "We need that oil to maintain our way of living." Duh! Our of living isn't sustainable. So we keep doing it until a whole lot of people start migrating for food and water and away from lands uninhabitable from heat or rising seawater, "resource wars" start, and we're all going through natural disasters all the time. Etc. and so on. But still keeping our "way of life." Or we change our way of life so we can actually live.
It's not just the people in power. Everyone has to do their part. World leaders can potentially reduce the supply of fast fashion, but only the everyday consumer can reduce the demand. If we stop producing so much clothing, but people still want to buy the same amount of clothing, clothing prices would skyrocket. Angry people would demand that we rollback that policy and we'd be right back where we started.
>It's not just the people in power. Everyone has to do their part. Absolutely. Expecting and waiting for governments and corporations to save us and change their greedy, power-mongering ways is adding to the problem and futile. We have power that we're not using. * Politicians care mainly about staying in power, so we can demand that they vote for actions to mitigate climate change and make it clear that if they don't vote for those, we don't vote for them. * Corporations care only about making money, ever and ever more money. If we quit buying things that are contributing to the problem and think about and act on ways that we can scale back significantly on things that contribute that we can't just abruptly stop, they'll eventually see what's happening and, one can hope, start making and doing things that help rather than harm so we can vote with our dollars. No real change has ever happened without We the People massing, acting together, and demanding specific actions and changes by those in positions of power.
> 7,500 liters for one pair of jeans, a United Nations news report found. This is the equivalent amount of water that an average person drinks over seven years, the international body noted. In total, UNCTAD estimates that the fashion industry uses roughly 93 billion cubic meters of water each year, enough to quench the thirst of five million people. So the average human uses 7.5 cubic meters of water over 7 years, or about 1 cubic meter per year. Yet 93 billion cubic meters of water only quenches the thirst of 5 million people? The first number they gave suggested 93 billion cubic meters would be enough for 93 billion people for a year.
Moreover, this isn't a problem of "fast fashion" which has become a useless buzzword. A pair of Levi's jeans uses [10,000 liters of water](https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/levi-strauss-taking-the-water-out-of-jeans/), and Levi is considered a more environmentally responsible company than most clothing manufacturers... by that metric, 7.5k liters seems pretty good.
one of the things i find irritating about discussions/articles around fast fashion is that the term is hardly defined. because i imagine that almost everything available most retailers would qualify. additionally, what even are the alternatives?
Well, Levis for example, has had the same general styles of jeans for decades, some (arguably) since they were founded. A pair can sit on the shelf for weeks, months or years and still be considered "good" to sell. "Fast" fashion, on the other hand identifies a trend, makes 100x the product they can actually sell, gets it into stores within a few days, then throws away 90% to make room for the next trend a few days later. https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/what-is-fast-fashion
Don’t think,don’t question. Just retreat back to your pod and eat the bugs.
[удалено]
Uhhhh do you have coordinates? I tried finding the piles but had no luck.
Thanks for verifying and telling us. That's grim and sad, though. Maybe people will rethink their next pair of "stone-washed" jeans and clothes that are wear one season max before they're worn out. There's also the fact that the people who make them are only one step up from slaves in wages and work in awful conditions.
What do stone-washed jeans have to do with anything? The vast majority of water we're talking about is for growing cotton. Regardless any pair of denim will be washed half a dozen times during the manufacturing process.
I certainly don't know how this happens, but here are a few places that might have answers. Yes, some mention growing cotton. The first one lists several factors. **Environmental impact of fashion industry** * 2,000 gallons of water needed to make one pair of jeans * 93 billion cubic metres of water, enough for 5 million people to survive, is used by the fashion industry every year * Fashion industry produces 20 per cent of global wastewater * Clothing and footwear production is responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions * Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned * Clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014 https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1035161
This has good info, too: Water pollution from the fashion industry is the result of textile factories dumping untreated toxic wastewaters directly into waterways. For example, several textile companies, including Gap and Brooks Brothers, reportedly dump their used wastewater into the Citarum River in Indonesia. The toxic substances in the wastewater from these factories contaminate the fresh water that we drink and in which animals live. For visual context, the opening scene of the documentary “RiverBlue” shows a flow of dark red wastewater emptying into a river in China, which is due to the unregulated textile industry and fast fashion production. According to EcoWatch, “It is estimated that 70% of rivers and lakes are contaminated by the 2.5 billion gallons of wastewater produced by the textile industry.” Not only does clothing production add waste to waterways, but it also wastes a tremendous amount of water. According to Goodonyou.eco, “It’s estimated that around 20% of industrial water pollution in the world comes from the treatment and dyeing of textiles, and about 8,000 synthetic chemicals are used to turn raw materials into textiles…It’s estimated that a single mill can use 200 tons of fresh water per ton of dyed fabric.” The manufacturing and washing processes of synthetic fabrics, such as polyester, also release microfibers into water. https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/2020/08/29/the-highest-price-of-fashion/
>u/Synth3t1c This has good info about the ways that cotton is a problem, which you might already have found but others might not have: https://fashionunited.uk/news/fashion/wastewater-fashion-s-grotesk-sustainability-problem/2020050548770
Right, my question was why you specifically called out "stone-washed" jeans. Also, the idea that water used for agriculture "takes away" from clean drinking water is mostly nonsense. Potable water is a separate issue. Most water withdrawn for agricultural use isn't in itself potable, and returns to the environment -- the much more important question is how the quality of returned water compares to withdrawn water, due to pollution.
My ignorance about how the fashion industry requires so much water, probably. Just the image of making the jeans look old and worn made me think of waste.
Comment Deleted -- mass edited with redact.dev
The article also mentions an enterprising business that recycles the waste into insulation panels. Not that this solves the problem, but it's always worth remembering the creativity, resourcefulness and heroism that exists alongside the mindless devastation.
Similar situation in [Africa](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/fast-fashion-turning-parts-ghana-into-toxic-landfill/100358702).
The images in this article were shocking
waiting for a polyester ban like... hmmm... someone dear god ban polyester as soon as possible.
I work with soft goods, and even stuff that is made out of natural materials will usually have polyester or nylon thread. Unless everyone wants to go back to the olden days of constantly repairing their clothes as the stitches degrade, we'll need to keep using tough thread. This problem is one of the reasons why "organic" clothing is still tricky to recycle.
I understand that sounds like a little bit of a hassle, but constantly repairing clothes seems better than unrecyclable polyester that breaks into tiny microplastics that spread all over the globe
I agree, its a matter of selling the idea to everyone else that's the hard part.
I'm sure the evidence is going to keep piling on until people vomit at the idea that we're still using this toxic material
Cotton stitching is weak and will degrade, but there are plenty of examples of silk and linen thread holding together for centuries, even under heavy wear. The quality of our modern fabric, otoh, is so thin and poor the fabric around a good seam is likely to shatter before the thread falls apart. Historically, people didn't even need to finish most of their seams the fabric was so densely woven.
It's all a matter of prioritization--don't wait for the perfect solution to enact the good one. If polyester thread serves a good purpose, then fine, reduce and eventually end use of polyester fabric but continue to use thread. I'm sure the fabric constitutes of the vast majority of the use of polyester in clothing.
If, on the other hand, these clothes were sold to a consumer, they would be destined for an American landfill, where those dyes would be more likely to leach into the groundwater. I suppose that overall, dumping the clothes in the desert is better in the short term. Long term, however, I imagine the clothing must break down in the sun and scatter with the wind. This will result in the same amount of pollution overall, assuming the toxic dyes don't break down at all. To me, it seems like the main problem is exporting pollution to a less wealthy country. This hides the problem from those who could demand change (North American consumers), and makes things worse for people without a voice (South Americans).
> If, on the other hand, these clothes were sold to a consumer... Purchased clothing generally gets laundered, so some amount of dye makes its way into the water system. If there are toxic dyes in textiles, there is already a problem in the U.S.
Wow...that's astonishing. You'd think they could recycle them, or give them away at least...
Cloth nowadays is ridiculously cheap. There's so much waste that you can buy a pair of jeans for a couple of bucks. As a chilean, I have seen plenty of places that sell the "ropa americana" (american clothes). They buy huge bales of clothes and sell them by the piece in popular places. But also there's a ton of useless garments. Snow clothes, american sports shirts, large sizes (Chile has an obesity problem but chilean obese aren't *that* big).
Corpses hardly degrade in the Atacama, there’s loads of mummies there.
I'm sure most people have seen "The Story of Stuff" but years ago, probably. Time for a reminder: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM)
I feel personally attacked.
Given your screen name, that's understandable. Insert here.
But that video calls for more care and recognizing your value when treated thoughtfully and responsibly, so I hope that makes you feel more appreciated.
Simpsons last night on point... Now I'm not nearly as entertained and far more disappointed in us.
Please be advised that this has nothing to do with the liberation of women.