Textiles + Water Impact: Why Everywhere Uses Recycled Cotton

Growing materials like cotton, linen, hemp, silk, and wool requires the use of an enormous amount of water. So do additional processes like finishing, laundering, and dyeing. The textile and fashion industry uses about 79 billion cubic meters per year of water (1). 2.7 billion people in the world lack fresh water while the fashion industry uses more water per a year than the entire nation of France (2).

The creation and finishing of textile products causes water pollution, further affecting clean water supplies. Toxic substances like dyes, chemicals, and heavy metals harm our global water system, poisoning some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Eco-friendly actions in the clothing industry are critical to reducing the industry's impact on the environment. Regenerative organic cotton farming and using bio-based fibers are steps in the right direction, but recycled cotton is the most sustainable option.

After the intensive cultivation and harvest, the cotton fiber still requires roughly 15-20 gallons of water per pound (5). Producers use water to dye, print, and finish the cotton fabric. During this stage, manufacturers treat fabrics with a variety of toxic chemicals, including dyes, detergents, and finishing agents which often end up in untreated wastewater. This pollution can have a devastating impact on human health and the environment.

Pollutants can contaminate drinking water, harm aquatic life, and contribute to algal blooms. According to the World Bank, around 20% of global water pollution comes from the textile and fashion industries (6). For example, the textile industry pollutes around 70% of China's fresh water with 2.5 billion gallons of wastewater (7). These vulnerable worker populations already face overcrowding, poverty, and difficult working conditions (8).

Before 1856, people made textiles from natural fibers like cotton, silk, and wool. All dyes were also natural until Sir William Henry Perkin discovered the first synthetic dye called 'Mauve'. Today, there are roughly 8,000 different chemicals commonly used in textile production (9).

Many of these chemicals are poisonous to people, workers and the environment. The skin easily absorbs the most commonly used azo dyes that create bright, vivid colors. They cause disruption to the endocrine system, increased tumor formation and systemic allergic reactions (10).

The water from dying returns to the environment as a toxic chemical soup. This mixture contains leftover dyes such as disperse, reactive, acid, and azo dyes. It also contains heavy metals, mordants, and fixatives (11).

Emerging regulations in the EU and China prohibit the sale of products which contain carcinogenic amines, but approved garments still regularly contain trace amounts of these substances.

Western brands continue to be responsible for the vast majority of this production in watershed polluting contract factories. Two major incidents have prompted labor standard reforms while textile water pollution stands far behind. One is the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Dhaka in 2013. The other is the forced labor of 570,000 Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Organic cotton, though grown without chemicals or GMO seeds, has a similar water footprint to conventional cotton. Recent studies question the publicized idea that organic cotton saves 91% more water than regular cotton. These studies challenge the report from Textile Exchange which compares rain-fed Organic cotton versus irrigated conventional cotton (12). This is not an apples to apples comparison, because irrigation is the reality for the majority of organic and conventional cotton production (13).

Organic cotton also uses the same toxic dyes and chemicals for dyeing and processing as conventional cotton. This process consumes equivalent amounts of freshwater resources and creates similar environmental pollution.

The water footprint of cotton is only getting worse with climate change. Half of the world’s cotton growing regions will face a high climate risk from drought, floods and wildfires by 2040 (14). Heat and drought are already dramatically reducing American cotton yields, one example being the minuscule 2022 Texas harvest.

A lot of the water used by US cotton production comes from the Ogallala Aquifer. The 2018 National Climate Assessment considers the aquifer as a non-renewable resource (15). As cotton yields decrease, increased irrigation put this resource that spans eight states from Wyoming to Texas at extreme risk.

As a result of decreased cotton yields, prices for certain types of cotton, such as upland, Supima, and domestic organic, have significantly increased. 

Creating synthetic fibers such as polyester and nylon involves using a significant amount of water and energy, and the vast majority of these synthetic fibers come from crude oil and natural gas. Polyester production requires approximately 50,000 to 70,000 cubic meters of water per tonne (16). Additionally, washing these fibers releases microplastic pollution.

In the polymerization stage, industries transform oil or gas into higher molecular weight hydrocarbons. These are the polymers or plastics used in textile production. The process can also use other light olefin gases like ethylene, propylene, and various monomers. Polyester production primarily uses a toxic antimony-palladium catalyst.

Making plastic fibers like polyester or nylon uses less water, but releases more harmful greenhouse gases. Certain greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide from making nylon, are 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide (17).

To make thread or fiber for clothes, producers melt extrude nylon or polyester and quench the hot fibers in water. The wastewater from making synthetic fibers contains dangerous chemicals like lead, antimony, and arsenic.

Most eco-friendly clothing combines recycled polyester and recycled cotton to make it easier to spin and weave. No such thing exists as a safe polyester or nylon textile, whether virgin or recycled. These synthetic textiles cause microplastic pollution, which release toxic metals into our bodies when we consume water and food containing the microplastic particles. In fact, we are all consuming up to a credit card worth of microplastics each week (19). 

Adding biodegradable additives to textile fibers that people wash makes the situation worse. Examples of these additives are Ciclo, Biosphere, and Primaloft Bio. These additives make microplastics in the ocean break into small nanoplastic particles (20). These can easily pass into the brains of animals, pass into plant cells, and accumulate in humans. These nanoplastic particles are responsible for cancer, endocrine disruption, and harm to various body-systems as they are ingested and lodge themselves in gastric, lung, and organ tissues (21).

Cotton fibers, trees, and bamboo are all comprised of cellulose and lignin. The rayon, viscose, and lyocell process transforms this plant material into fibers for textiles. The cellulosic fiber process mixes the plant material with toxic solvents and extrudes it through spinnerets into fiber. Most (but not all) of this solvent is reclaimed in modern processes; however, most rayon and viscose mills release chemically polluted water.

Lenzing AG, an Austrian company, produces the largest amount of Tencel lyocell fiber. Tencel production reuses almost all water and solvents, but uses toxic chemicals like N-Methylmorpholine-N-Oxide.  Extremely expensive infrastructure is necessary for the process, which primarily consumes eucalyptus trees and some European beech wood. These tree plantations consume 1/20th the amount of water as average cotton cultivation.

The negatives are the higher price, complicated transport, industrial expenses, and dangerous chemicals versus organic or recycled cotton (22). If people cut down more trees than they replant, it leads to desertification as trees are essential to the water cycle. Furthermore, a significant portion of the worldwide cellulosic fiber infrastructure produces fibers that require blending because of fibrillation. Blended cellulosic fabrics  are more likely to pill and the garment has a short lifespan leading to more production in turn greater water consumption.

Everywhere CirCot™ circular cotton products are the first safe, affordable, and practical water-friendly textile option. We make CirCot™ yarn from 100% mechanically recycled cotton, and our mechanical innovations create a soft, comfy, and long-lasting textile.

As new technologies come online, we are integrating recycled cellulosic fibers and regenerated marine biodegradable synthetic fibers into our forthcoming BioBlend™ materials. No additional water, harmful dyes, or toxic chemicals are used in the production of Everywhere products. 

Consumers can reduce the fashion industry's water footprint by taking responsibility for what they wear. These actions include buying less, choosing sustainable brands, and taking good care of their clothes for longer use. The textile and fashion industries have a responsibility to reduce their water usage and pollution. Brands and manufacturers can reduce their impact by using sustainable materials, investing in water-efficient technologies, and treating wastewater correctly.

Everywhere Apparel holds a Climate Neutral certification and we use only Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certified recycled cotton to address the environmental impact from conventional textiles. Everywhere products produce no wastewater, and we never use toxic chemicals or dyes. Our 100% recycled cotton apparel use no water in fiber cultivation, bleaching, or dyeing. One Everywhere T-Shirt saves over 800 gallons of water.

1. Global Fashion Agenda and The Boston Consulting Group (2017). Pulse of the Fashion Industry Report.
2. World Wildlife Fund. Water Scarcity. 
3. National Geographic. How Your T-Shirt Can Make a Difference.
4. The Texas Tribune. Texas’ cotton industry is facing its worst harvest in years — costing the state more than $2 billion.
5. Common Objective. The Issues: Water.
6. World Bank. How Much Do Our Wardrobes Cost to the Environment?
7. Riverblue.
8. National Geographic. How Your T-Shirt Can Make a Difference.
9. Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry. Sustainable chemistry: A solution to the textile industry in a developing world.
10. Research advances in the adverse effects of azo dyes.
11. The true cost of colour: The impact of textile dyes on water systems.
12. Transformers Foundation. Cotton: A Case Study in Misinformation.
13. Cotton Works. Comparing Conventional and Organic Cotton Production.
14. Cotton 2040.
15. NY Times. How Climate Change Is Making Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive.
16. Water Footprint Network. Water Footprint Assessment of polyester and viscose.
17. Meet N2O, the greenhouse gas 300 times worse than CO2.
18. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future.
19. World Wildlife Fund. No Plastic in Nature: Assessing Plastic Ingestion From Nature to People.
20. Vice. 'Nanoplastics' Could Be Worse Than Microplastics and We Know Almost Nothing About Them
21. Nanomaterials (Basel). Impact of Microplastics and Nanoplastics on Human Health
22. Good on You. Material Guide: What Is TENCEL Lyocell? And Is It Sustainable?