Comfort Colors t-shirts have been my quarantine uniform. But cotton t-shirts have a heftier environmental and social impact than I realized. Here are five surprising facts about t-shirts.
It takes 2700 liters of water to make a cotton t-shirt
That’s as much water as one person drinks in two and a half years. Cotton is a water-intensive crop, and the dying and finishing processes also require lots of water.
It might have been made with forced labor
Grace wrote about forced labor and textiles last month.
“Uighurs held in detention camps in China serve as a source of forced labor in dozens of factories with inhumane conditions. Xinjiang produces 84% of China’s cotton and contributes significantly to the nation’s yarn and textile production. With 33% of U.S. apparel being imported from China, it is highly likely that the supply chains of many of our major brands involve Uighur forced labor. In fact, companies like Walmart, Kmart, Uniqlo, and Muji have already been linked to Xinjiang factories.”
It has a 9.5 pound carbon footprint
Synthetic fibers like polyester actually have a larger carbon footprint than cotton does– a polyester t-shirt has a 12.1 pound carbon footprint, mainly created while textiles are dyed and finished.
It’s one in two billion
Each year, about two billion t-shirts are made and sold worldwide.
It might take anywhere from five months to 200 years to biodegrade
A cotton t-shirt takes about five months to biodegrade, while a polyester t-shirt can take anywhere from 20 to 200 years to biodegrade.
To learn more about the environmental and social impact of the fashion industry, listen to this week’s Handful series.
- College Football, Ariana Grande, and Water - September 3, 2023
- Livestock and Land Use: How Are We Feeding The Planet? Impactfull April 2022 - April 19, 2022
- What Does Voluntourism Look Like? A Case Study in a Cambodian Orphanage - March 28, 2022