Water Footprint in The Clothing & Textile Industry
Water Footprint in The Clothing & Textile Industry
1. CURRENT SITUATION
The fashion and textile world is one of the most lucrative business ventures in
the economy. Aside from giving the consumers protection from the different
elements, it allows them to explore styles that affect trends throughout the years.
However, fast fashion culture– involving the speed of production and
consumption of fashion–makes it one of the major contributors to water pollution;
and one that has a huge water footprint.
The measure of a water footprint involves both direct and indirect
freshwater consumption. The processing and production of clothing is estimated
to spend around billions of liters of water in every step of production from dyeing
to applying specialty and finishing chemicals to using a water bath to remove
aforementioned chemicals. Every 20,000 pounds of manufactured fabric
consumes about 36,000 liters of water. The water usage of textile mills still varies
depending on what type of fabric is produced, processed, and the types and
modernity of equipment used (Shaikh, 2009). Furthermore, the whole production
cycle from the supply chains to the end-users also contributes greatly to the
pollution. In 2015, the fashion industry alone consumed 79 billion cubic meters of
water which can fill approximately 32 million Olympic sized pools, which
threatens Earth’s water supply in 2030. Part of the reason these seemingly
simple garments have such enormous water footprints is that they’re made from
cotton, and it takes 20,000 liters of water to grow just one kilogram of cotton.
(Benson, 2018). According to “The Water Footprint of the Blue Jean'', 2020,
global textile production requires an estimated 44 trillion liters of water yearly for
irrigation, and inside a 3% chunk of that, 95% is for growing cotton. Aside from
textile production, doing laundry by using washing machines requires an
additional 20 billion cubic meters of water per year (Conscious Club, 2019).
The excessive use of water may be nothing to its great consumers, but the
impact is greatly felt by the producing community (Chan, E., Khatib, H., &
Sabhnani, D., 2020). In fact, experts predict that the world is not far from
experiencing water scarcity, especially in developing countries where textile
production is established, because of cheap labor and lenient environmental
laws. As water scarcity becomes more extreme, it threatens the fashion
industries, cotton-growing nations, and livelihoods that mainly rely on fishing and
farming (Chavan, 2018).
The severity of the situation can be truly felt when looking into the
production costs of one outfit, in this case, a white shirt and a pair of denim
jeans. In “The Impact of a Cotton T-Shirt | Stories | WWF,” 2013, it states that a
single cotton tee shirt needs 2,700 liters of water to produce. This is enough for a
person to drink water for 900 days. After purchase, the garment goes through
washing and drying, which costs 40 gallons of water and five times as much
energy to dry it. (“It Takes 2,700 Liters of Water to Make a T-Shirt,” 2013). The
top accounts for just half of the outfit, the jeans to go with it has an even bigger
water footprint. According to the United Nations (2020), it takes 10,000 to make a
single pair of denim jeans. This includes growing the cotton, washing, then
dyeing it blue. In total, a basic white shirt and jeans combination has a massive
12,700-liter water footprint, and a single person could own multiple combinations
of this outfit in their lifetime, or even in a year. Though consumers are not to be
blamed, rather the industries that produce. These companies have the
responsibility to find ways to produce sustainably, otherwise there will no longer
be resources to produce with.
2. IMPACTS
With these processes, the scathing effects it does on the environment are
getting more evident through the years. Millions of gallons of dye water waste are
continuously discharged into bodies of water by the production of fabrics in textile
mills everyday. Resnick (2019) asserts that the products of these processes such
as polyester, nylon, acrylic, and other synthetic fibers are all forms of plastics
which make up to 60 percent of the textile being used worldwide. The clothes
washed may release microplastics which can be harmful to other species in the
marine ecosystem, and could be ingested by other marine species till it reaches
the food chain to humans. Additionally, Aivazidou and Tsolakis (2018) said that
from an end-to-end supply chain perspective, consumers are also responsible for
the impact they contributed in terms of water consumption and pollution as they
wash their clothes. The average Western world family throws away an average of
30 kg of clothing each year. Only 15% is recycled or donated, and the rest goes
directly to the landfill or is incinerated. 72% of our clothing is made from synthetic
fibers, which is basically plastic -- one of the materials that take too long to
decompose. (SustainYourStyle, 2014).
3. SOLUTIONS
Despite the given circumstances and effects of the industry, there ways to
make the industry more sustainable, and environmentally responsible in terms of
water footprint. By relying primarily on goods that can be produced within its
borders, a country can develop self-sufficiency. A country may choose to reduce
the burden on the natural resources within its borders by importing
water-intensive products from other countries. For water-scarce countries it can
sometimes be attractive to import virtual water (through the import of
water-intensive products), thus relieving the pressure on the domestic water
resources. Chavan (2018) iterates that countries can both import and export
virtual water through their international trade relations.
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