How Ethical is Denim?
Denim is one of the world’s most iconic fabrics. It has been a fashion staple for over 150 years, evolved from a workwear essential to a fashion statement, with luxury and designer brands becoming a prominent force in the market.
Today, Denim fabric is responsible for apparel items such as jeans, skirts, vests, shirts, blouses, and jackets. It has become a fundamental component of the casual wardrobe and a staple textile within the global apparel market.
However, how does the fabric relate to the environment?
First, the biggest concern in denim's unsustainability is the enormous quantity produced each year. In 2018, more than 4.5 billion pairs of jeans were sold worldwide. (For reference, there were about 7.6 billion people in the entire world in 2018.) It is, unfortunately, still a growing market.
What is denim made of
The most commonly used material in denim manufacturing is cotton, which is the most water-intensive crop and one of the leading users of pesticides. These heavily toxic pesticides are harmful to human health and are risky to the environment.
Besides the materials, denim production puts the most strain on the environment due to the washes, dyes, and chemicals used and the overall water consumption needed to make just one pair of jeans.
The “700 gallons of water” it takes to produce a T-shirt is often referenced when discussing the water waste in clothing manufacturing. Yet, the 2,900 gallons it takes to make a pair of jeans is seldomly mentioned.
Denim is not only problematic to the environment; it is also harmful to the workers. Since its origin, the production of denim has been heavy in exploitation. Even today, each step in the production, from harvesting the cotton to finishing the jeans, is ripe with hazardous conditions and the ill-treatment of labor.
One of the most popular denim, the distressed or washed denim, results in denim cloth being intentionally damaged to look aged. Jeans can be distressed by rubbing the fabric with stone-washed or sandblasted friction, chemicals, or bleach, or ripping and tearing portions of the material.
Shocking statistics from the World Health Organisation have confirmed that the aggressive sandblasting process leads to incurable diseases like lung fibrosis, emphysema, and silicosis among factory workers.
Alternatively, acid-washed denim is one being placed in an industrial washer with pumice stones soaked in a chlorine water mixture. The washing process will bleach the jeans and create the classic tie-dye effect of acid-wash jeans.
The water can poison waterways, further poisoning anyone who contacts such water in the local community.
Given the massive amount of water and pesticides used to growing cotton, the chemical and dyes dumped into rivers from stone washing and sandblasting, and the energy consumed to manufacturing jeans; denim may very well still be one of the least eco-friendly fabrics of all time.
Sustainable alternatives
On the other hand, the below actions can help us reducing the impact and making denim production more sustainable.
1. Increasing usage of Organic cotton:
Organic cotton is usually grown with methods and materials that have a lower impact on the environment than conventional cotton. It maintains soil fertility, reduces toxic pesticides and fertilizers usage, and helps to build biologically diverse agriculture.
Nowadays, 100% organic cotton is being used without bleaching the cotton fabric, where environmental-friendly enzyme finish and dry techniques are being used.
2. Dry techniques of denim manufacturing:
Unlike wet processing, dry techniques of denim manufacturing include whiskering, manual scraping, grinding, and destroying, are considered to be less harmful to the water source.
3. Eco-friendly (Natural) dyes:
Traditionally, chemical dyes are used in denim coloration. But nowadays, dyes extracted from vegetable sources are also used as a colorant for denim fabric manufacturing. When natural indigo is used with environmental-friendly agents and alkali, the entire dying process becomes more sustainable.
4. Recycle of Denim:
Instead of disposing of untreated denim, some companies started to look at recycled denim. In 2018, in Sweden, about 1500 tonnes of unused, wasted material was recycled into new denim, and 50 million liters of water were saved.
5. Enzyme finish in denim washing:
Denim washing is the removal of surface dyes and fibers to give the garment a rough appearance. The use of pumice stones is one of the options to produce this effect. Bio-degradable Cellulase enzymes are used as a sustainable alternative to stone wash to produce comparable results.
6. Laser/dry treatment:
Unlike the wet treatment, laser treatment is a dry technique where carbon dioxide gas is being used. Computer-controlled laser beams are used to change the surface color on denim fabrics.
7. Ozone bleaching:
Ozone which has a robust oxidizing nature, is being used to deteriorate the indigo dyes on the fabric’s surface to produce the bleached appearance. Dry ozone techniques are also available, reduces the need for bleach and water to create sustainable denim.
Denim Brands Initiatives
Levi Strauss & Co.
Back in 2017, Levi’s signed a pledge to use 100 percent sustainable cotton by the year 2025. That aligns with the brand’s ongoing commitment to using 100 percent sustainable cotton by 2020, including 95 percent from the Better Cotton Initiative, plus a mix of organic cotton and recycled cotton.
Patagonia
Patagonia Denim claims to use 100% organic cotton, grown without GMO seeds, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. In addition, they employ Archroma Advanced Denim Technology, an innovative dye process that colors the denim with sulfur dyestuffs that bond more efficiently, which results in using 84% less water, 30% less energy, and emit 25% less CO2 compared to conventional denim dyeing processes. Patagonia denim jeans are as well Fair Trade Certified™ for sewing.
The R Collective《DENIM REIMAGINED》
The R Collective works together with Levi’s on the Denim Reimagined project. Every piece in the collection is made from upcycled Levi’s® aged inventory and leftover samples in a creative design effort to prolong denim’s lifespan.
Uniqlo
The company has pledged to use 100 percent sustainable cotton in all of its clothing by 2025. It is re-evaluating every step of its production.
In addition, the Uniqlo BlueCycle jeans program, an eco-friendly denim production process developed at the company’s Jeans Innovation Center in Los Angeles.
BlueCycle reduces the amount of water used in denim finishing by up to 99 percent and replaces labor-intensive sandpapering with laser technology. The water savings are measured against the company’s study of regular fit jeans made between 2017 and 2018.
Uniqlo claimed it had replaced natural pumice stones that require large amounts of water to wash away the residue with reusable, powderless eco stones to achieve this water reduction. The process is combined with an ozone mist washing machine that uses nanobubbles, which breaks up the denim surface, resulting in jeans with a softer hand feel.
According to Uniqlo, the jeans are finished to the same standard of quality as traditionally finished jeans with “just about a teacup’s worth of water.”
The above initiates, however, to us, is just a start. We believe it is still a long way for the truly sustainable denim journey. Our goal is to raise the market's awareness of the issue of sustainability, which can contribute to a more thoughtful way of consuming.
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