Impacts of the Textile Industry
If you had to name the biggest causes of climate change, you might say single-use plastics or lack of recycling programs. These things, while bad for the environment, can’t hold a candle to the havoc being wreaked by the textile industry. The most environmentally harmful thing in your house may not be your roll of plastic wrap, but the t-shirt you’re wearing right now.
WATER USAGE
Each year, the textile industry uses almost 21 trillion gallons of water. A huge portion of that goes into cotton production – it takes more than 713 gallons of water make one single cotton t-shirt. Fabric dyeing also accounts for a big chunk of that 21 trillion gallons. In fact, worldwide, we use more than 1.3 trillion gallons of water each year to dye fabric. That means we’re dumping more than 250,000 Mississippi Rivers into fabric dyeing every single year.
TEXTILE WASTE
Each year, the average American throws away about 81 pounds of clothing each year, 85 percent of which end up in landfills. These textiles break down into microplastics and get released about half a million tons of microplastics into the ocean each year, accounting for about 35 percent of all the microplastics in our marine ecosystems. But it doesn’t stop there – these plastics are eaten by smaller fish, which get eaten by larger fish, which get caught and eaten by humans. We consume the microplastics the fish ate, and the same toxic chemicals make their way into our bodies.
GREENHOUSE GASES
The textile industry is responsible for a tenth of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. That’s more pollution than all global flights and maritime shipping emit combined. While polyester isn’t as water-needy as cotton is, it’s much worse on the greenhouse gas front. One polyester shirt releases more than twelve pounds of greenhouse gasses every year. And each year, the textile industry cranks out about enough shirts to release 1.5 trillion pounds of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
SHEMP™ is the Answer
Uses less water
Wool and hemp have a lower demand for resources throughout their production process. In addition to needing far less land than cotton to produce the same amount of fiber, industrial hemp needs about one half the amount of water that cotton does to thrive.
extremely versatile
Crafting a greener future for the textile industry is a tall order and SHEMP™ yarn is up to the job. SHEMP™ yarn is versatile enough to suit a variety of uses from out door apparel, home decor and hand knitting as well as military applications.
releases less ghgs
No greenhouse gases are released in producing the raw materials for SHEMP™, as it only takes sunshine, a plot of earth, and water to produce industrial hemp and sheer sheep! SHEMP™ is committed to ensuring the process doesn’t release unnecessary chemicals.