The Impact of Fashion on Water Consumption

The fashion industry can be very water consuming.

The fashion industry has a huge demand for cotton. To grow cotton, a lot of water is needed in irrigation. The river feeding into the Aral Sea has once been drained just to irrigate cotton fields beside the sea, eventually leading to the drying up of the Aral Sea to 10% of its original area.

The dyeing process in textile production also uses a lot of water. Even worse, the water being used becomes contaminated as it is submerged in toxic chemicals and cannot be reused. If this water spread to other water sources, then more water will become unusable due to textile production.

The fact that fast fashion culture is becoming more and more prevalent today aggravates the huge burden the fashion industry casts of global water supplies. Processes such as cotton cultivation, dyeing, transportation, and waste water generation is repeated even more frequently, leading to more water usage.