How Much Water Does it Take to Make a Pair of Jeans?

Water rights and accessibility is no doubt a global issue. Despite it being in the news, day to day when we wash our face or dishes we rarely think about how much we are wasting. However even if you are water conscious at home its more likely that you do not think about how much water is being wasted when you buy products.

Indirectly we can waste water, whether its buying agriculture from fields which do not have a efficient irrigation systems, or from buying a pair of jeans.  ” It takes around 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to produce just one pair of regular ol’ blue jeans.” That’s more water than it takes to make a ton of cement or a barrel of beer (although I’m sure some of you do not consume this yet).  And that’s just in terms of growing cotton, when you take into account the dye process as well as the machine wash almost 9,982 gallons of water are used.

How can we fix this?

1. stop purchasing so many jeans

2.  Buy levis, they are built to last, and its strongly recommended to not machine wash them. They suggest freezing them instead, it kills all the germs. however, if  there is a grass stain that you would like to get off all it takes is a sponge and a cup of water opposed to 40 gallons ( a typical machine wash).

 

sources: http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/how-many-gallons-of-water-does-it-take-to-make.html

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