Earlier this week, I shared five things you probably don’t know about your favorite t-shirt. Today, I’m delving deeper into the detrimental impacts of the fashion industry and how you can make smarter decisions about what you wear.
Cotton, Polyester, and a Lot of Water
It takes 2700 liters of water to create the typical cotton t-shirt. That’s enough drinking water to last one person two and a half years.
This is a problem because of the lack of freshwater available for all life on earth to survive. 2.5% of the earth’s water is freshwater, but most of that takes the form of ice caps and glaciers, so it’s not accessible for us to use– leaving less than one percent of the earth’s water for all of life on earth. In a world where 844 million people lack access to clean water, how we use freshwater is critical. And that’s not to mention that much of the world’s cotton is grown and irrigated in dry regions like Egypt and the Xinjiang province of China.
Other materials that your clothes might be made of aren’t quite as water intensive– for example, producing a polyester t-shirt requires less water than a cotton t-shirt does. But the environmental impacts of fashion production go beyond just water usage. Synthetic fibers like polyester have a larger carbon footprint than cotton does. For example, a polyester t-shirt has a 12.1 pound carbon footprint, mainly created while textiles are dyed and finished, while a cotton t-shirt has a 9.5 pound carbon footprint.
Labor and Human Rights in Garment Factories
Most of the clothes that we wear are produced in countries like Bangladesh, China and India.
In many of these countries, the minimum wage is very low, and at many textile factories, workers don’t make a living wage. While the minimum wage is a legally-mandated pay rate, a living wage is a holistic measure. It’s the minimum income needed for someone to meet their basic needs, such as food, housing and clothing. Living wages differ based on where one lives, just as minimum wages differ based on the laws of different countries.
According to the Global Living Wage Coalition, the living wage for someone living in Dhaka City, the capital of Bangladesh, is $214 per month. In the areas around Dhaka City, a living wage is $177 monthly. For comparison, the minimum wage in Bangladesh was raised in 2018 to about $100 per month– much less than what one needs to provide for their basic needs.
One garment worker in Bangladesh reported working 12-hour days to earn $95 per month. This isn’t uncommon for garment workers, and since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, conditions have worsened. At least one million Bangladeshi garment workers had been furloughed or fired by April, and many who have gone back to work since then have faced pay cuts. Many large fashion brands have cancelled orders, further harming garment workers.
Beyond being paid less than a living wage, many garment factory workers may work as many as 14 to 16 hours per day, with the longest days during peak season. Workers might not be paid for overtime hours, and might work until 2 or 3 am.
Beyond long work days, forced labor can be common in garment and textile factories. Workers may be employed against their will or may be forced to work under debt bondage.
As Grace wrote about last month, one example of forced labor occurs in China. Uighurs held in detention camps in China serve as a source of forced labor in dozens of factories with inhumane conditions. The Xinjiang province 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. Just this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 13 tons of human hair products suspected to have come from imprisoned Uighurs.
In Uzbekistan, the world’s fifth-largest cotton exporter, the government drafts about a million people to harvest cotton each fall. Public sector employees must help with the harvest, or they risk being fired or arrested. Workers are paid little to nothing for their labor.
A 16-hour work day is double the average American work day. While working as much as twice as long as the average American, garment factory workers cutting or sewing a cotton t-shirt work in inhumane conditions, sometimes as slaves.
Environmental Impact: Microplastics and Your Dryer
When you wash a piece of clothing made of synthetic materials, the mechanical and chemical stresses that that garment undergoes while being washed causes it to release microplastics. Microplastics are any piece of plastic less than 5 mm in length– basically, just a tiny piece of plastic. Microplastics in the form of tiny synthetic fibers detach from clothes made of synthetic fabrics like polyester while they’re being washed. In a study published in Nature, researchers found that a new polyester shirt released over 300 microfibers during its first wash. While wastewater treatment plants can remove the majority of these microfibers from the water supply, many of them still get through.
As Layla told us last week, 80% of the world’s plastic lives in landfills and oceans. And it actually turns out that washing synthetic textiles is one of the main sources of primary microplastics in the ocean. While research on microplastics is relatively new, we don’t exactly know how they impact human health. But microplastics likely release harmful chemicals that can be detrimental to marine life and contaminate the environment that they end up in.
Although polyester fabrics have been found to release fewer microfibers into the environment than other fabrics, they take much longer to biodegrade. Plus, microplastics from polyester have more harmful chemicals than other textiles.
Beyond the release of microplastics into the environment, washing clothes in a washer and dryer also takes a considerable amount of energy. A dryer uses 5 times more energy than a washing machine.
Your Role in the Fashion Industry
The most sustainable piece of clothing is the one you already own.
One of the biggest things that you can do to counteract the negative environmental and social impacts of the clothing industry is to know where your clothes were made, who made them, and the conditions in which they were made. When you’re purchasing new clothes, try to find out these things. There are so many great sustainable and equitable brands out there, like ABLE and Nisolo, that guarantee their workers a living wage and healthy working conditions. Check out my interview with Connie of Nisolo on the Novel Hand podcast– we talked about sustainable fashion and living wages.
But before you even buy new clothing, consider this: the most sustainable piece of clothing is the one that you already own. Rather than replacing your wardrobe with new clothing, make use of what you have. By choosing to buy less, you’re voting with your dollars. You can also buy second hand at thrift stores or through websites like ThredUP.
Knowledge is power– when you know who made your clothing and the environmental impact of producing that clothing, you’re more informed about the impact of what you are buying. Small steps like buying fewer new pieces of clothing or buying second hand can go a long way towards reducing the detrimental impacts of the clothing industry.
I’ll leave you with this– even when you’re done with a piece of clothing, it still has an impact. Manufactured synthetic textiles like polyester or spandex take from 20 to 200 years to biodegrade. That’s a lot longer than you’ll likely own or wear any piece of clothing– so it’s important for us to think about the impact of what we buy and wear.
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