Cleaning denim′s reputation, one pair of jeans at a time | Environment| All topics from climate change to conservation | DW

Every time you buy a new pair of jeans, it’s like turning on your shower and letting the water run down the drain for 21 hours.

That’s because growing cotton – the fabric denim is made from – requires large amounts of water. For example, a pair of jeans requires up to 10,000 liters of water.

The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland lake in the world, has largely dried up, partly due to the intensive cotton cultivation in Central Asia for use in the EU.

Amazingly, around two billion jeans are bought every year. But it wasn’t always like that.

In the 1850s, when denim was exported from the French city of Nimes to the USA, hence the name “de Nimes”, it was considered a sturdy fabric for miners. It wasn’t until more than 100 years later that jeans found their way into the counterculture and then into the mainstream.

Now the industry has become part of the environmental crisis, and understanding how denim got here to clean it up is critical.

Smart or casual, the denim industry is expected to grow despite the global Covid-19 recession

How denim pollutes the air, water and workers’ lungs

Not only does denim consume a lot of water, it is also a harmful pollutant.

Levi’s estimates that a pair of jeans emits 33.4 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere, the equivalent of driving more than 1,000 kilometers by car. This is mainly because denim is made in countries like China and India where coal is the main source of electricity.

The blue color of denim is mainly achieved through the use of a synthetic indigo dye that has been associated with toxic chemicals such as cyanide, which are known to be used as a poison. In order not to pay for wastewater treatment, companies dump these chemicals into rivers. A 2019 study found textile dyes from factories in Bangladesh in nearby crops.

Working conditions in denim production have been linked to respiratory diseases such as silicosis

Denim trade flows mainly from east to west, and Bangladesh is now the main exporter to the EU

Working in a denim factory can also be fatal. Take sandblasting, for example. This method uses high pressure hoses to spray sand against denim for a worn look that has become popular with consumers. For workers who inhale the small particles of sand, the process can cause a fatal lung disease called silicosis.

When he was only 15, Bego Demir was working in a denim sandblasting factory in Turkey, where he knew over 120 people who died of silicosis.

“After 8 years of sandblasting, half of my lungs stopped working,” he told DW.

Demir, who coordinates the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) in Turkey and is helping to ban sandblasting there in 2009, now wants to expose the process that replaced it – the use of potassium permanganate.

In a 2019 CCC report, Demir found that Turkish workers in denim factories that use potassium permanganate experienced early asthma and skin irritation. He says that potassium permanganate is still used in denim production around the world.

“Brands wait for workers to lose their lives before they act. They reacted the same way in the sandblasting factories. It was only after many workers had lost their lives that the brands acted,” Demir said.

The denim overproduction problem

The intense supply and demand culture of denim has resulted in widespread overproduction, and the average US consumer now owns seven pairs of jeans. The industry was valued at $ 56.1 billion in 2017 and is expected to grow during the global recession of COVID-19. Trade flows mainly from east to west, and growth is concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region.

Bangladesh, for example, is now the leading denim exporter to Europe and the third largest to the USA. Since opening in 2007, Ha-Meem denim has grown six times in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka. That’s the equivalent of 4,000km of denim per month for stores in the US and Europe – almost the same distance as between New York City and Los Angeles.

“We make denim for everything from fashion brands to grocers like Tesco and Lidl,” Ravindra Shah, general manager at Ha-Meem Denim, told DW. “We take care of everyone. We offer whatever product you need.”

The average American owns seven jeans

Elastic stretch jeans have worsened the environmental impact of denim

Meeting global demand has led the denim industry to expand the use of cheap, stretchy jeans. These are made by weaving cotton with gasoline-based elastic fibers that are difficult to recycle and non-biodegradable, which makes denim less of an environmental impact.

Around 90% of the denim made in the Ha-Meem factory is stretch fabric because “necessity is the mother of invention,” Shah told DW, emphasizing the importance of consumer choices in influencing the direction of the industry.

On the way to biodegradable materials

But attitudes could change. In 2020, a survey by US consulting agency McKinsey & Company asked buyers in the US and Europe whether the COVID-19 pandemic had changed their relationship with fashion. The results showed that 67% considered sustainable materials to be an important factor when buying new clothes.

Some brands are responding by investing in alternative jeans. For example, Tencell ™ – a biodegradable tissue made from pulp made from wood pulp sourced from trees grown in sustainably managed forests – has contracts with popular denim brands such as Levi’s, Closed and Kings of Indigo.

Candiani, a company based near Milan, Italy, has made a stretch denim from natural rubber called Coreva ™, which can biodegrade in six months without any toxins getting into the soil. Candiani’s website calls it “a trailblazer for the denim industry” because “it contributes to an end-of-life solution”.

A survey conducted in 2020 found that consumers want more sustainable denim

Denim brands are starting to sell more sustainable fabrics

Recycle denim

But critics warn more sustainable fabrics alone is not enough if industry does not fight overproduction.

“The whole idea of ​​biodegrading cotton is a waste. Take, make, use and throw away,” said JamesVeenhoff, Co-founder of The House of Denim, a non-profit organization this supports a circular economy for denimsaid DW.

In October,Veenhoffled the signing of the denim deal in Amsterdam, where 30 major denim brands, including Tommy Hilfiger, commit to By 2023, at least three million denim items will be made from up to 20% recycled fabrics in the Netherlands. Since the Dutch market sells at least 23 million denim items annually, the denim deal aims to save more than 15 billion liters of water.

Back to the roots of denim

Like the rest of the textile industry, the cost of mass producing denim is no longer a secret and the industry is now Become a melting pot of solutions.

“We are in the discussion phase,” said Dalia Well done, a longtime promoter of sustainable fashion and Consultant at REMOkey, a sustainability awareness organization, told DW. T.The journey has already started. “

Well done believes This denim has to rediscover its purpose. To do this, consumers need to understand their story as work clothes, counterculture statement was turned.

“In the 1980s the market pushed the consumer to be the rebel. And it is time we rebelled again. We should start branding it and making the consumer feel like an environmental hero, like a new rebel for a greener cause. “