Textile Industry Alarming Pollution

Absolutely.

While cotton in itself is a natural and wholesome fiber, most don’t realize that cotton textile production typically follows the “wet method”, which contaminates the environment through all stages. Textile wet processing (from fabric production to dyeing, printing and chemical finishing) has always been considered one of the worst industrial sectors in terms of water consumption and pollution. One of the most harmful activities occurs at the onset of fiber processing. Cotton fibers must be desized to remove starch, which hinders dye penetration into the fiber. Starch is removed either by hydrolysis or oxidation, both of which use harsh chemicals to make the starch water soluble. When the starch is rinsed out, the waste water has a high biological oxygen demand (BOD) that renders it unusable. About 50% of the water pollution is due to waste water from desizing.

In treating 1 ton of cotton fabric the composite waste stream contaminates roughly 50-160 cubic meters.¹ Brazil produces, on average, one million tons of cotton textiles annually.² This means that anywhere from 50 to 160 MILLION cubic meters of water are contaminated annually, only by the production of the textile. Just to put this into perspective… only 1385 million cubic kilometers of water exist on earth. Only a small percentage of that is fresh, 90% of which is locked in ice caps, and yet another percentage is in clouds and underground. The actual availability of fresh water computes to 1,302,000,000 cubic meters.³ Cotton is such an everyday product, yet somehow we overlook that the level of water contamination produced through its processing quickly pushes the limits of availability. This is the output of contamination only by processing and though nature works to recycle some of this and cities reclaim much of the water used, it is not enough.

Dyeing is another matter altogether. Did you know that to dye one kilogram of cotton requires 70-150 liters of water? This means that for every few pairs of jeans you own, you could fill your gas tank twice with the amount of polluted water generated. This directly applies to Brazil, where much of the water quality has been directly impacted by the textile industry’s inappropriate disposal of chemicals. One of the most obvious effects of dye-saturated wastewater is the strong color. Colored wastewater is regularly dumped in rivers and streams, which then produces a significantly negative impact on the development of water-life. The dye-darkened water blocks the light, which in turn inhibits photosynthesis- the building block of aquatic ecosystems. The Amazon is worlds most diverse and fragile ecosystem, and this ecosystem fuels the planet. The protective atmosphere of the earth “breathes” every six months. This semi-annual thinning and thickening of the atmosphere, which is visible from space, is attributed to the earth’s tilt and the effect that indirect sunlight has on the rainforest (the Amazon). For half of the year, the rainforests in the southern hemisphere work hard to regenerate oxygen and remove contaminants. The Amazon’s breath of fresh air is something that we cannot do without… so why don’t we work harder to treat the problem?

In Brazil’s case, having less stringent business and environmental standards makes the country more appealing to historically dirty industries, such as the textile industry. There are so many reasons why manufacturers do not employ cleaner practices or do more to purify the water they’ve used. To make a long story short, if it is more expensive to do the right thing and the laws of the country do not require cleaner practices, then why bother?

That is why it is important for each of us to take responsibility. It is time to know the consequences of our actions. Each time we fill our gas tank, we should think not only of the emissions we generate, but also remember that the clothes on our backs may also contribute to the degradation of the environment. We should try more to support companies that use organic fibers and dyes, and who treat their workers ethically. The stark reality is that we are approaching a time of complete globalization- not only as economies, but as communities. Making the right everyday choices is a good way to start taking better care of one another and ourselves.

Textile Industry Alarming Pollution

The TRUTH Behind Standard Cotton Textile Production Methods