Textile Environmental Impact

I listened to a very impactful talk by Patty Murphy on zero waste quilting, and how she started down the path of using every bit of fabric from a quilting project. Here are some sobering statistics. These are numbers from the EU, where they addressing human impact on the environment, but we can extrapolate to elsewhere. 1. It takes a lot of water to produce textile, plus land to grow cotton and other fibres. To make a single cotton t-shirt, 2,700 litres of fresh water are required according to estimates, enough to meet one person’s drinking needs for 2.5 years. There are green house gas emissions to factor in as well/ 2. The textile sector was the third largest source of water degradation and land use in 2020. In that year, it took on average nine cubic metres of water, 400 square metres of land and 391 kilogrammes (kg) of raw materials to provide clothes and shoes for each EU citizen. 3. Textile production is estimated to be responsible for about 20% of global clean water pollution from dyeing and finishing products. 4. A single laundry load of polyester clothes can discharge 700,000 microplastic fibres that can end up in the food chain. The majority of microplastics from textiles are released during the first few washes. So mindfulness about the environmental impact is key, upcycling is good as well, and making good use of your quilting fabric stash is an earth friendlier goal.