Day 3 — Life Cycle of a T-Shirt
T-shirts are one of the most common garments in the world, with about 2 billion global sales per year. But how many of us are aware of how sustainable, or rather unsustainable, it is?
After watching this video, I learned a lot about the life cycle of what seems to be an innocent and simple shirt. It goes through various processes, including:
1) Sowing, irrigation, growing and harvesting of cotton in fields
2) Shipping of cotton to spinning facilities so they may be blended, carded, combed, pulled, stretched and twisted into ropes of yarn
3) Knitting and Dyeing
4) Stitching to make the shirt
5) More shipping, to stores and homes
6) Laundry
Q: According to this, what are the positive and negative impacts of t-shirt production?
A: Positive impacts are that:
- Many shirts can take more or less the same journey together (e.g. when shipping…), reducing the carbon footprint PER shirt
- Most of the process is done by machine, which may contribute to the health and safety of people who would have to do these jobs otherwise
- The jobs that are available for people increases employment, however not in the best conditions
- Some cotton is organic, however less than 1%
- Some countries produce their own clothing domestically, which cuts a lot of the carbon footprint
- There are ways we can try to make sure we become as sustainable as possible, by buying second-hand and try hang our clothes rather than use a dryer machine
Negative impacts are that:
- The cotton requires a huge amount of water and pesticides, which are also a threat to human and environmental health
- The manufacturing process (knitting…) uses a lot of chemicals too as well as heat
- Some of the dyes used for vivid colours contain cancer-causing cadmium, lead, chromium, and mercury
- Chemicals can also be released as toxic waste into the air and our water
- People in countries sewing the clothes, such as Bangladesh, are over-exploited and face poor conditions in tight spaces
- Moving everything around (via shipping, train or truck) adds to the shirt’s huge carbon footprint
- Washing machines and dryers use huge amounts of energy and water
T: Tracking my toothpaste…
1) The ingredients (e.g. silica and cellulose gum) arrive by lorry to a tanker.
2) They are taken to a giant mixer to mix together and form the paste.
3) The paste then gets taken to get dyed in colours such as red and blue.
4) Once done, it is all put in the tube from the bottom and then crimped for tight closure.
5) The toothpaste gets shipped via ship, train and lorry to shops and eventually sold to consumers, one of them being me.
6) Once I finish with it, the product becomes neither recyclable — as the tube contains aluminium and plastic — nor reusable, as it is too small and difficult to tear apart.
To try and be as sustainable as possible with toothpaste, we can:
a) Look for organic, or sodium laurel sulfate free, toothpaste
b) Buy toothpaste with recyclable tubes, and ensure we use all of the toothpaste inside before throwing it away
c) Make sure to not leave the faucet running whilst brushing, as it wastes our valuable source of water
