Summary
Highlights
A typical t-shirt starts as cotton on a farm in America, China, or India. Cotton production requires substantial water (2,700 liters per t-shirt) and extensive use of insecticides and pesticides, which harm field workers and ecosystems. Organic cotton, grown without these harmful chemicals, accounts for less than 1% of global cotton production.
Cotton bales are shipped to spinning facilities, often in China or India, where they are processed into yarn. The yarn is then knitted into fabric and treated with heat and chemicals to become soft and white. The dyeing process uses commercial bleaches and azo dyes, some of which contain heavy metals like cadmium and lead. These chemicals cause widespread contamination when released as toxic wastewater into rivers and oceans.
After fabric production, the cloth travels to factories, frequently in Bangladesh, China, India, or Turkey, where human labor is essential for stitching the t-shirts. Workers in these factories often face poor conditions and low wages, as exemplified by Bangladesh, which has become a major exporter of cotton t-shirts.
Manufactured t-shirts are transported by ship, train, and truck to high-income countries for sale, contributing significantly to a t-shirt's carbon footprint. Apparel production accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions, a figure that continues to rise due to increased consumption driven by fast fashion and cheaper garments, with a 400% increase in global production between 1994 and 2014.
In a consumer's home, the t-shirt undergoes one of its most resource-intensive phases: washing and drying. The average American household does 400 loads of laundry annually, using about 40 gallons of water per load, and dryers consume five to six times more energy than washers.
The clothing industry is the second-largest polluter globally after oil. To mitigate this impact, consumers can consider shopping secondhand, choosing textiles made from recycled or organic fabrics, washing clothes less, line-drying them, and donating, recycling, or reusing old garments instead of throwing them away.