The Environmental and Human Cost of Making a Pair
of Jeans
Kathleen WebberMar. 08, 2018 01:43PM
ESTPOPULAR
Americans
do love their denim, so much so that the average consumer buys four pairs of
jeans a year. In China's Xintang province, a hub for denim, 300 million pairs
are made annually. Just as staggering is the brew of toxic chemicals and
hundreds of gallons of water it takes to dye and finish one pair of jeans. The
resulting environmental damage to rivers, ecosystems and communities in China,
Bangladesh and India is the subject of a new documentary called The RiverBlue:
Can Fashion Save the Planet?.
It is estimated
that 70 percent of Asia's rivers and lakes are contaminated by the 2.5 billion
gallons of wastewater produced by that continent's textile industry. In scene
after scene in the film, the dark frothy spill off can be seen rushing out of
dye facilities while a cadre of scientists and environmental experts detail the
public health crisis that has resulted from the largely unregulated
manufacturing process.
Co-directed
by award-winning documentarians David McIlvride and Roger Williams and produced
by Lisa Mazzotta, RiverBlue has won 13 awards globally including Best
Documentary at Raindance in London and will be receiving the Green Drop Award
from Filmambiente at the World Water council on World Water day, March 22.
Three years in the making, the film follows internationally celebrated river
conservationist, Mark Angelo, as he paddles the rivers devastated by the
chemical waste and the local communities who rely on these rivers for drinking
and bathing. These communities suffer from a high incidence of cancers,
gastric, skin and related issues afflicting both their residents and factory
laborers.
RiverBlue
The
Chemicals in Your Jeans
What makes
the process of making jeans so poisonous to people and planet? Consider just
one of the most popular types of jeans today—distressed. To get that
"lived in" look, denim is subjected to several chemical-intensive
washes. Campaigners from the environmental group Greenpeace, who tested the
outflows near dyeing and finishing facilities in the top denim producing towns
in Asia, found five heavy metals (cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead and copper)
in 17 out of 21 water and sediment samples taken from throughout Xintang one of
the locales featured in the project. Toxic campaigners in China also discovered
heavy metals like manganese, which can be associated with brain damage, in the
rivers.
These
chemicals don't stay put. They can also be transported to our North American
oceans, atmosphere and food chains and accumulates in places far away from
their original source.
Where
Should the Change Be?
The
question the film poses to viewers: Are brand-name clothing corporations
disregarding the environment in their zeal to make their clothes faster and
cheaper for the consumer? "Low cost clothing has a high cost attached to it,
one to the environment and public health," explains Angelo.
The
solution the film's producers unveil is two-fold: through innovation and
consumer education there can be change.
Director
David McIlvride was determined to find brands making jeans which didn't do
damage to the environment. He found the father of distressed jeans: Francois
Girbaud who introduced the eponymous stone washed jean decades ago. "It
took 40 yrs. before we realized what we made and what we did was wrong,"
says Girbaud of using permanganate in the 1970s. "If people knew that the
spraying of permanganate on your jeans to give you that acid- wash look was
killing the guy doing the spraying, would you still want that look? I don't
think the customer is aware of what is happening abroad. We have to change the
process of making jeans and brands have to be willing to invest because we are
destroying the planet," says Girbaud.
A Better
Jean Through Technology
In
California now, the designer was trying to re-establish himself as manufacturer
of good jeans when McIlvride found him. "He led us to the Spanish company,
Jeanologia where they distress jeans by engraving images on the fabrics with
lasers (light and air) and eliminating water without increasing the cost,"
says McIlvride. They are now considered a leading industry innovator.
It was a
trip to China in the mid 90s that made Alex Penadés and the other execs at
Jeanologia want to change the way they did business. At the time the company
was a jeans washing consultancy for finishers researching and investigating
industry solutions.
"Once
we saw the pollution in the rivers and the workers exposed to the chemicals we
knew we had to innovate." Jeanologia now creates technology to treat and
finish jeans (giving them a certain feel or aesthetic). "We started
searching for ways to make garments in a more sustainable way. We have been
dyeing clothes with water since the beginning of time and we faced the reality
that even though it had been done this way in the mass consumer world, it was
not sustainable," explains Penadés.
Jeanologia
began working with Girbaud in 2003 and still does. They developed several
technologies using light and air to finish jeans using little water and no
chemicals. "It wasn't pretty at first and for designers the look is the
most important thing," he says referring to their first prototypes back in
1996. "It took us a while to get better to convince industrial finishers
to make that shift," says Penadés who works with brands like Levi Strauss,
V.F. Corp (makers of Lee and Wrangler)., PVH Corp. (Calvin Klein, Tommy
Hilfiger), Inditex (Zara), H&M, Uniqlo and Marks & Spencer among
others. Today, laser technology can give a pair of jeans a worn look instead of
sandblasting or hand sanding which can be lethal or detrimental to workers and
the environment. Their G2 ozone treatments introduced in 2005, fade down the
color of a jean instead of using chemicals like bleach or hypochloryte. In
2011, they unveiled eflow technology that uses air (nanobubbles) instead of
water to dye jeans and give them properties like softness and wrinkle
repelling. The company is also expanding, working on the technology for knits,
wool, cottons and blends.
RiverBlue
Using these
innovations, an average pair of jeans requires just a glass of water to finish
when it used to require 300 liters. "It requires a big capital
investment," says Penadés of the technology. Depending on the business
model the capital investment is made by the dyeing and finishing facilities or
brands. "In the beginning it was like preaching in the desert," he
says. "Everyone was comfortable doing things in the same way as always.
Why should anyone change their methods of production if they are doing
well?"
Jeanologia
has Environmental Impact software to measure the footprint of every style and
brands know where they are and how they can improve. Penadés has seen the tide
started to change. Three years ago, about 16 percent of the jeans in the world
were made in a sustainable way he says. Now 35 percent of the jeans are made
more sustainably. "About 6 billion pairs of jeans are made a year so that
means 2 billion pairs are now being made in a more sustainable way."
Innovation
Through Science
While
filming the movie, most denim manufacturers barred the filmmakers from shooting
inside their facilities. Italdenim, one of three denim manufacturers in Italy,
invited them to film at their facility. President Luigi Caccia had been making
denim for more than 40 years when he too realized rivers were dying and workers
were becoming sick from the chemicals they were exposed to. In 2014, he sought
to create a cleaner dyeing process. First his company invested in a machine,
the only one of its kind in the world, that takes indigo dye and uses
electrochemicals (Co2 and O2) and no water to make the colors for their denim.
They then
found a company using chitosan, which comes from the waste of the food industry
(it is the natural derivative of chitin which is the exoskeleton of shrimp and
crab) and applied it to the yarn after dyeing it. "It creates a shell to
protect the color so dyes will not rub off and less dye is needed overall to
color the denim. This new process saves chemistry, water and energy and is
biodegradable. Because there are no chemicals, the process doesn't create skin
problems. "Your skin absorbs 65% of what you put on it, good or bad. We
introduce chemicals to our skin with the food we eat, the environment we live
in and our clothes. You can choose if you want to smoke or not but no one tells
you that your denim may be harmful to your body," says Caccia.
The Cost to
Make a More Sustainable Jean
Italdenim
sells their denim to 30-40 brands around the world including Joe's Jeans and
Mother Jeans in the U.S. "It was important to find solutions that did not
increase the cost of the fabric so it would be available to all. If a brand
wants to buy a sustainable denim it should cost the same as the alternative. We
should be able to produce that or we should find ourselves a new job."
Penadés
says brands have a choice to manufacture in a traditional way or a sustainable
way. "The water and energy of traditional production is costly and so is
pollution. Today, including the capital investment, you can produce the same
product at the same price. Brands can do it. If the consumer is aware they have
to request these kinds of products today. Consumers must also know what their
impact on the environment is because of their acts of consumption. It's all
about co-responsibility."
Girbaud
agrees. He now hears customers asking where things come from and how clothes
are made. "Brands are finally talking about this, too. I just hope I live
to see the changes."
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