Fast Fashion sucks (water)
Fast fashion sucks. It sucks a lot of water, to be specific. Cotton, the fiber behind our comfiest t-shirts, our favorite pair of jeans, and our softest socks, is one thirsty plant.
Cotton Costs
It takes about 700 gallons of water to produce one cotton shirt, according to a UN report: enough water for one person to drink at least eight cups per day for three-and-a-half years. The same report states that it takes about 2,000 gallons of water to produce a pair of jeans— more than enough for one person to drink eight cups per day for 10 years.
Uzbekistan’s Aral Sea— once the fourth-largest lake on earth— serves as an infamous example of a body of water dried up from the demands of cotton farming.
Dyeing Dries
Dyeing textiles is also water intensive: the process, according to the UN, uses enough water to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools each year. The EU notches the fashion industry’s dyeing process at 20% of all industrial water pollution worldwide, as dyeing wastewater is dumped into ditches and rivers.
Polyester Pollutes
In order to curb dependence on water-sucking cotton, suppliers have turned to synthetic polyester, a plastic spun into fibers. Polyester is durable, quick drying, wrinkle-resistant, and…polluting.
A single laundry load of polyester clothes can discharge 700,000 microplastic fibres that can end up in the food chain, the EU parliament reckons.
The EU parliament report also points out that the majority of microplastics from textiles are released during the first few washes, and that the fast fashion cycle of buying cheap and buying new promotes many first washes.
Getting your “water’s worth”
What does this mean? It means that when you buy second-hand, whether you buy cotton or polyester, you honor the costs of production— you get the “water’s-worth” out of the items that have already entered the market. When you buy pre-washed items, you avoid adding to the growing scab of microplastics choking our ocean floors. When you opt for sustainably-grown cotton and sustainably-dyed textiles, you promote bubbling river ecosystems: happy fish and thriving algae. Don’t wring your hands so hard about long showers or relaxing bubble baths: just go thrifting!
