Global water and your cotton tee shirt

With hundreds of thousands of environmental groups worldwide and in this space age of the internet, its sometimes disappointing to note how little attention is paid to the textile industry and its montrous impact on the planet’s water.

I put the blame on the fact that non of us are willing to acknowledge that we as green minded as we say we are, that if we acknowledge being a part of this monster, that it will somehow discredit the labels we have given to ourselves as friends of the earth, savers of the planet, lovers of the ocean and warriors for rainforests.

Yet,the facts are indisputable and it doesn’t take an industry expert or insider to find out about the environmental damage caused by textiles, in particular, water pollution which is a very visible factor.

Taking the world’s most popular fibre as an example, we will examine the impact of cotton on the environment. Starting with the cultivation of the cotton fibre itself. The amount of cotton used in a single tee shirt consumers up to 1700 litres of clean water and this is only in its cultivation! The natural flows of rivers and streams in cotton growing countries like India,China,Egypt and Uzbhekhistan have been diverted to feed this thirsty crop. Uzbhekistan in particular holds top honors as its cotton fields turned the world’s 4th largest lake into a salty puddle today. Note that organic cotton uses the same quantity of water to grow. Environmental impacts like these have caused many to challenge cotton’s claim as a sustainable fibre,including this incident where the UK ruled that the US cotton council’s advertising of cotton as “sustainable” was misleading.

From there, the the thirsty cotton tee continues to waste another estimated 1000 litres of clean water in order to process the cotton balls into the tee shirt you’re wearing today.Faced with accusations of irreparable damage to the environment, the cotton industry has responded with a limited use of closed loop production where the waters used in its processes are cleaned,filtered and in some cases,even reused but this process has yet to make a meaningful impact on its overall harm as its too expensive to implement and the net gains are neglible at best. Oeco Textiles, a third party certification group lists a whopping 2000 chemicals in use as part of the process of making textiles. How can you clean the waters when there is that much chemicals in use?

You can’t. This is why rivers in China run blue from denim factories along its banks. The Yamuna River in India also has clothing factories to blame for its toxic waters. Waters so high in toxins its not even considered suitable for farm irrigation. China has recognised the dirty nature of the textile industry and has in recent years, abandoned its policies of supporting this one product that helped it build its massive economy. When over 1 billion of us does not have access to clean drinking water, now is the time to rethink what we’ve done.

So what can we, as tree huggers, ocean lovers and planet savers do to reduce the impact of cotton? Buy less or if you have to buy a new tee shirt, look for one that has a reduced water footprint. Recycled cotton fibres is a fairly new product that has a greatly reduced water consumption. It may not have the sleek handfeel of combed cotton but its definitely not the water hog that virgin cotton is.

Eco friendly clothing : a definition from ecoGear

The word ecofriendly as defined by the Oxford dictionary means being friendly to the environment. Having a net positive effect on it. This means that

you could have an ecofriendly lifestyle perhaps by planting trees in your neighbourhood or choosing to buy organically grown food products but you cannot have an eco friendly product as producing anything, will create an impact on the environment no matter how you made it.

The proper term for any products that have been processed, as opposed to an organically grown apple straight from the tree, should be an ecofriendly option or as the good folk at Terrachoice call it, environmentally preferable. An example would be in a case where you had to buy a new dress or jacket today, you opt for the ecofriendly option as opposed to the regular option.

And what makes an ecofriendly clothing? Is it organic cotton where the only redeeming factor is that it doesn’t use pesticides or agrichemicals in its cultivation? What about the fact that one single organic cotton tee uses up to 2500 litres of water just to grow? Whether organic or not, cotton is one thirsty plant and its cultivation single handedly dried up the world’s fourth largest lake, Lake Aral in Russia as all its tributaries were diverted in order to grow cotton*.

The people that made bamboo clothing jumped all over this point and made claims that bamboo not only requires zero pesticides and agrichemicals but uses less water in its cultivation. Did that make bamboo clothing ecofriendly? And what does anti bacterial features have to do with being ecofriendly? It was a good thing for the FTC to shut down all the eco claims they made**.

On top of that, no one so far has dared to open the can of worms to the public eye that involves the finishing processes in clothing.The cultivation of raw fibres may have been a more ecofriendly process but that’s a small percentage of clothing’s final impact on the environment.Unlike fruits or vegetables that are ecofriendly because they’re organically grown, when the raw clothing fibre is harvested, it goes through multiple processes all done by different factories from the raw fibre processer to the spinner to the dye house and finally the weaver or knitter. All these processes require copious amounts of energy, fresh clean water and loads of chemicals. Stripping the natural oils from the cotton ball for example usually calls for the use of heavy metals to speed up the process and bring consistency. In the case of bamboo textiles, sulphur dioxide is added to the pulp to speed up the melting process where the tough fibres are turned into a sludge before its extruded into a yarn.

The dyeing process is an even worse polluter of air and water. This report from 1999 lists all the emissions from the various dyeing and finishing processes in great detail. Even though there has been a push since for a more ecofriendly process with closed loop production systems, the fact remains that the biggest producers of clothing and textiles today are in places like India, China, Bangladesh etc where no such facilities or technology is available. Marks & Spencer, the venerable British store has led the push to go green in their textiles with solar powered factories and cotton fibre supplies from sustainably irrigated fields but does this make their clothing ecofriendly? Not according to the folks at Terrachoice, whose standards for eco clothing is that it must be from organically grown fibre and NOT dyed. According to their standards then, every clothing or textile item in the market that has been either yarn dyed( stripes,check patterns etc ) or solid dyes is not ecofriendly regardless whether its yarns were organically grown or not!

With all these issues in mind, is there such a thing as ecofriendly clothing? The products that come closest to being anywhere kind to planet earth is recycled fibres. Not so much the recycled plastic bottles or rePET as its commonly known as this product has also gone through the same dyeing and refinishing processes but recycled cotton scraps. The odds and ends from factories that are chopped back into short fibres for spinning into new yarns. The technology is not new and companies like Jimtex in the USA have been around for years. Another maker, 2ndNature yarns has a great list of eco savings for recycled cottons from chemical and energy savings to landfill diversion and land savings.

A word of caution here though, as amazing as recycled cotton sounds, you have to dig deeper into its manufacturing processes as recycled cotton yarns are almost always blended with synthetic fibres to improve the strength of the yarn. The most common one is acrylic which some makers dye unfortunately, in order to achieve color brilliance or consistency. The other synthetic fibre commonly used in recycled cotton blends is recycled PET or plastic bottles and it’s the same case here, some users of this fibre use a dyed rePET yarn for color whereas some will ask for the more ecofriendly option, the undyed version.

Last but not least, is how the up to this point, eco friendly clothing item is finished. We’ve seen products on the market covered with plastisol inks that should have been banned from this earth for all the phthalates, PVC and other noxins in them. Some people just don’t get it.

*ttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/04/aral-sea-almost-dried-up_n_524697.html
**http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt160.shtm

Eco clothing for the outdoor lover.

Most of us head into the outdoors to enjoy the wilderness of it all. The fresher air, the smells of new blooms and sounds that no audio system can reproduce exactly. We call ourselves nature lovers and for the most part, we are a crowd that is aware of the problems facing the natural environment including pollution and development that is increasingly narrowing down the green spaces that once was there.

Eco consciousness is a term used to describe this feeling and big business knows it. This is why the “Outdoors” market is booming in triple digits even as conventional markets continue to shrink from the depression of 2010.

Consumers however, are starting to wise up and question eco claims and in many instances, have had major brands changing their green tunes like this case of Porsche and its eco claims. The same backlash is happening to the Outdoors industry and the industry has responded with the creation of a group to set standards for its members. Aptly named the Sustainability Working Group( as in working towards sustainability ) the group covers every possible concern that could come out of any eco claims and provides guidance for its members who are cashing in on the Outdoors person and their love for nature.

The Eco Index is an impressive guide for their members and challenges all Outdoors brands and manufacturers to work towards the standards set here so that their products can truly be called eco friendly.

Looking a few of their key points :
-Select raw materials that require less energy and have a low carbon footprint throughout their lifetime.
-Select materials that minimize the amount of fresh water used and wastewater created through their lifetime.
-Select raw materials that contribute to significant positive changes in manufacturing and processing efficiencies.

The most common fibre used in Outdoor type apparel and gear today is polyester. The virgin stuff that’s made from oil and contributes hugely to pollution of air,land and water. To make it even more toxic, performance finishes are often added,whether to yarn or finished fabrics and anything that can repel rain water or food stains and block out wind, cannot be good for the environment. I’ve wondered about this for the longest time and have not been able to confirm what happens, when all this lamination and chemicals is boiled down and recycled into a new yarn that’s commonly known as rePET. Did the chemicals leave the sludge when it was boiled down? And how was the sludge disposed of? You’ll see guidelines in the Eco Index asking manufacturers to dispose of sludge responsibly. How is that done? If you bury it deep enough, it will disappear? Out of sight out of mind sort of thing?

Anyway, onto the next phase, now that the item has been produced and sold, the new considerations become care of the garment. SWG’s guide specifically advises members to “specify low impact care such as cold water wash, line dry and no dry cleaning!” The energy savings mentioned here are tremendous as the washing machine and hot air dryer are two of the biggest energy hogs in your house. More benefits like that amazing sundried smell and feel can be checked out on this laundry site.

Its easy enough if we’re dealing with a recycled polyester hoody or cotton tee shirt but what do you do with a fully lined and padded “eco outdoor” jacket? What’s a nature lover to do?

The true nature lover will reject products like these.Any product that calls for dry cleaning should be avoided at all costs. In our opinion, the nature lover will go back to the days when clothing was made simply and as naturally as you can make it. None of this performance,rain repellent,stain resistant product that leaves such a heavy imprint on the environment.

When the winds blow cold, the nature lover will add on a scarf and another layer of clothing to keep the warmth in. Not add on a synthetic layer of cloth that will wreak havoc on the environment in its manufacture, in its use and in its end fate.