Reduce water use in Fashion
Facts:
- Out of all the industries, fashion uses 10% of the water used collectively.
- Cotton used more pesticides than any other crop.
- Clothing production accounts for 10% of the carbon emissions globally.
- Up to 20% of industrial water pollution is from fabric dyes.
Ways you can help:
- Wear more products that are organic- for example: bamboo, hemp or organic cotton which do not use pesticides that could lead to people being poisoned from drinking the water. Organic cotton makes up less than 1% of the 22,700,000 metric tons of cotton produced and should be encouraged to be produced more.
- Water that is used to make products could be filtered and reused rather than polluting local rivers and lakes that people collect water from
- Shop at places that do use the organic materials, for example: H&M, Zara, Nike, Marks and Spencer. These places are fashionable and good for the environment.
- Re-use your clothes or donate them or even re-sell them rather than throwing them. 80 Billion clothes are made per year and 350,000 tonnes of clothing (350,000,000 kilograms) go to waste. There are great apps to re-sell them, for example: Mecari, Poshmark and also Ebay (which is not an app but good anyway).
This is a big problem that, as well as being bad for the environment, can also kill people who need to take water from the places where there is not good access to clean water. They drink it and can get diseases, which because of the chemicals, can give them cancer or kill them. The fashion industry also takes water from key water sources and can dry them up- one example being the Aral sea. The children who have walked miles to get this water, have walked all this way just to die young from the chemicals that we put in there. They might even turn up to a water source that was once there, and after walking all day in the scorching sun, they might have to go home with nothing to take to their siblings and parents. And this happens just because we don't think about the other people and how they get affected by what we do. Make a difference and think of the countless lives forced into suffering because of the clothes we wear.
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