A t-shirt is a classic staple in everyone’s wardrobe. As the most basic item of clothing, it’s made a name for itself as being versatile and dependable. You can get a variety of different colours and styles like crew neck, v-neck, polo, collared, oversized, cropped – you name it! So, you might wonder, how can such a simple item have such an enormous environmental impact? Well, you’re about to find out. I’m going to take you on a brief journey through the extremely long and complex life cycle of a cotton t-shirt, and then provide some simple ways you can help reduce its environmental impacts.
Raw Materials
The journey of cotton begins as a seed. It’s planted in cotton farms all over the world, but most commonly in the United States, China, and India, where climates are warm. The seeds are then sown, irrigated, and grown into 22,700,000 metric tons of cotton per year (Ted-Ed).
Cotton is one thirsty crop; it takes 2,700 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to make a single t-shirt, which is enough water to fill 30 bath tubs. Farming cotton is also responsible for using more insecticides and pesticides than any other crop in the world (24% of the world’s insecticide and 11% of the worlds pesticide use; Good On You), which can be very damaging to both human and ecosystem health (TED-Ed).
There has been a recent trend in the fashion industry towards using organic (aka pesticide-free) materials, which in theory seems great as it reduces the farmers' and aquatic species' exposure to toxic chemicals. However, the remainder of the process still requires heavy amounts of water, dyes, and transportation (BBC).
Image source: USDA
Once grown into vast rows of fluffy plants, the cotton is then harvested, cleaned, packaged into bales and sent to the spinning facility.
Image source: Quartz
Manufacturing
Once the cotton has been spun and turned into yarn, it is then shipped to a mill where it is woven into sheets of colourless fabric and ready to be dyed (Treefy).
Image source: The Daily Mail
Each year, it takes approximately 5 trillion litres of water for dyeing fabric alone, which is enough to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools (WRI). The dyeing process also requires various toxic chemicals such as cadmium, lead, chromium, and mercury, which can cause widespread contamination when released into rivers and oceans (Treefy).
It is here during the manufacturing process where 20% of the global industrial water pollution occurs.
Image source: The Daily Mail
The dyed fabric is then ready to be sewn into t-shirts, which often occurs in Bangladesh by one of the 4.5 million workers employed in the t-shirt making industry (Treefy). These workers are often not treated well or paid fair wages, so on top of the environmental impact, there is also a host of social impacts associated with producing a t-shirt.
Distribution
The t-shirts are then pressed, packaged and ready to be distributed to stores or directly to consumers. Depending on where the t-shirt is manufactured, it could require travel by plane, ship, truck or most likely a combination of all three, in order to get into your hands. A life-cycle analysis completed by Sandra Roos, a PhD student at Chalmers Institute of Technology in Sweden, determined that 22% of a garment’s climate impact came from the transport to and from the store (Treefy).
Image source: Tropical Suitcase
Use
Your t-shirt is now finally in your possession – but the journey doesn’t end there. It goes through a few rounds of being worn and then it’s washed and dried and ready to be worn again. However, that washing and drying process isn’t as innocent as it sounds; a single load of washing uses 40 gallons of water, and a single load of drying uses 5x more energy than washing.
Image source: Eco-Age
Disposal
Once your t-shirt has either been ripped, spilled on, or you’re just over it and ready for a new one, it often gets thrown into the garbage bin and brought to landfill where it takes approximately 1-5 months to fully degrade. While it degrades, harmful greenhouse gases like methane are released into the atmosphere and contribute to climate change, and all those dyes and chemicals that went into producing the t-shirt are now leaching into the ground, potentially impacting groundwater resources.
In the UK, approximately £140 million worth of clothing, which equates to 350,000 tonnes, ends up in landfill each year. Think that’s bad? In North America, this number is a shocking 10.5 million tonnes, which is 30 times heavier than the Empire State building! (Fashion Revolution).
Image source: Trusted Clothes
Thinking about it on an individual scale, the environmental impacts don’t sound so bad. However, considering that two billion t-shirts are sold worldwide each year, the impacts become substantial, and to be honest, quite scary.
According to the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association, 95% of all clothing and household textiles can be recycled or repurposed (PRWeb). If we all start considering our clothes to be as recyclable as our paper or plastic bottles, we can start to make significant changes to the amount of waste that ends up sitting in landfills.
So, now what?
Okay, so that was super depressing. I’m not here to shame you or discourage you from ever buying clothes again; it’s just good to be aware that, although the price tag may say $10/£10, the environmental costs are much, much higher.
But thankfully, there are ways you can adopt the circular fashion model to extend the life of your current clothes, thereby reducing the environmental impacts. Some options are as simple as skipping the dryer and iron and opting to hang your clothes instead, which can save up to 1/3 of your t-shirt's carbon footprint (National Geographic).
Here are a few other simple ways:
WEAR: The simplest way to reduce the environmental impact of your clothes is to wear them and stretch their wear out as long as you possibly can.
REPAIR: Extend the life of your clothes by repairing rips/holes by sewing or adding patches, or removing stains.
REPURPOSE: If your t-shirt has been worn beyond repair, consider repurposing viable material into something else like a scrunchie, or using it as a dust rag.
RESELL: Consider selling your gently used t-shirts (and other clothing items) at thrift stores (see last week's blog post for more details on thrifting).
MAKE CONSCIOUS CHOICES: If you desperately need a new t-shirt and sustainable brands are not an option for you economically, then buy and wear the life out of it. Just make sure that it’s a practical purchase (i.e., a solid neutral colour that can be styled many different ways) and that you’re not just buying it because it’s cheap and/or on sale. Also, keep in mind that cotton is the lesser of two evils, with polyester being a rathermore environmentally detrimental fabric.
Image source: Fashion Takes Action Instagram
There is a whole other world behind the scenes of the fashion industry- from the moment you press (or physically) 'add to cart', to the moment you have the item in your possession. We hope this gives you some food for thought and makes you think twice next time you throw out or purchase another item that you may not actually need.
Anna Copeland
The Fashion Society
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