Why is Water Causing Waste?
Fashion has changed so much over time, and the generations who sport these looks have had different things they find important about the industry. One of Gen Z’s focuses has been sustainability in fashion. What does sustainability in fashion mean? It means producing products that keep the environment and social factors in mind when they’re being made.?
However, the fashion industry in general is not very sustainable. There are a few different factors that affect this, but many of the contributors are water-based including water consumption and pollution.
How Water is Used
Water is used in so many processes. Sheep require water for the land they graze. Cotton seeds need water to create cotton used for garment making. It’s also used in the process of making textiles and in the wet-processing stage of making fabrics like cotton.?
But why is using water so harmful in these processes??
The amount of water used in the process of making 1 shirt is 2700 liters. This amount could hydrate someone for 900 days. Now multiply that by how many shirts you see in a single store at your local mall. Using so much water causes there to be less available for things like drinking water. It also depletes the sediment that holds together groundwater, aka aquifer which can harm other processes like farming for fruits and vegetables.?
The process of making textiles and clothing is very water intensive. It can often lead to the pollution of the environments that these resources come from.
What is Wet-Processing?
The wet-processing stage is one of the last stages of making clothing. It involves dyeing fabric, like cotton after the cotton’s been spun and woven into usable fabric. After it’s been dyed, the cotton can be printed with different patterns, and finished or conditioned with different chemical treatments. Each of these steps requires a lot of water. It’s estimated that around 20 percent of global water pollution is actually the result of pollution from dyeing textiles. Many times, companies dump the contaminated water used in these processes back into rivers in the area.
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Maintaining Sustainability?
Companies like Levi’s realized that using such a large amount of water is super harmful for the environment. Their response was to create the Water>Less Program. This program created 20 new techniques to use less water in the finishing stage of making their iconic jeans. Now, about 60 percent of their jeans are made using the water-less techniques.?
Green Consumption
So why is it important for companies to pay attention to details like this??
Gen Z’s focus on sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and fair labor conditions also make them more likely than other generations to allow these factors to influence their buying habits.?
Green consumption is when consumers purchase and use products with lower environmental impacts. Many companies have realized the importance of doing research into this and have put initiatives in place to become more sustainable, like Levi’s and their initiative to use less water. Other ways companies can take the right steps to be more eco-conscious are using biodegradable materials, reducing packaging, lowering energy usage, lessening transportation of products etc.?
In conclusion, focusing on sustainability in fashion is very important. When companies switch to more environmentally sustainable practices, they allow there to be more resources in different processes we might not think of, less pollution of land and bodies of water, more clean drinking water, and so much more.?