Fiber Friends Unite

GETTING STARTED

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Each person researched a water related problem for our project.  Then, we narrowed it down and did more research.  Then we voted on our top 3 choices and did more research.

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In our research we found a website called watercalculator.org where we answered questions to find out our water footprint. We  learned a term called virtual water. Virtual water use means the products we use every day are made with water. So we are not using the water directly.  

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     - Such as 1 mile driven uses 7 gallons of water

     - To process 1 pound of cotton it takes 100 gallons

 

     - And it takes 700 gallons of water to make one shirt.

     - That’s equivalent to 3 years of drinking water for one person.

 

So we decided to find out more about the shirts.  

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Water is used in every stage of making cotton clothing, from growing the cotton, to pretreating, dyeing and finishing, to us washing our clothes every time we wear them.  For our project we focused on wet processing.  That’s the pretreatment and dyeing portion.

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We found out there are a lot of organizations trying to solve this problem of using so much water in the factories.  And several solutions have been created, but some are simple and some are really expensive.  One coalition is called Clean By Design.  They go into factories to make minor changes and build awareness. 

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Their goal is to get to 100 mills a year.  But there are 15,000 mills in China alone. Others are investing in new machine which can cost between $25,000 & $500,000 dollars. And it can take up to 7 years to recoup that investment.

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Customers expect to buy clothes at really cheap prices, so many factories don’t want to make the change.

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We reached out to Levi, Nike, Eileen Fisher, Patagonia, MEC, ColorZen and BlueSign and asked what their biggest problem was. Those who responded told us that awareness is a big issue. 

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Customers do not know water is used to make shirts because it is not on the shirt at the store. Our experts want customers to start asking questions.  The more companies that are asked the more they will ask their suppliers.  And that should bring enough interest to make changes. 

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So we decided to create a website to help teach our friends and community about this issue.  As you can see we talk about our project, ways everyone can help. Which companies are doing something right now. We also share all the new words we learned and put them into games that you can click and download. 

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Different Solutions being used throughout the world:

• Organic cotton uses less

• Waterless dyeing uses less

• Low-impact dyes use less

• Install nozzles on hoses

• Optimize existing processes for sustainability includes process modifications such as the use of enzymes, high fixation, low salt dyestuffs.

• Educate and train factory management and workers to influence better behavior

• Identify leaks, fix broken pipes, reuse heated water

• ColorZen Pretreats cotton fiber before dyeing.  Then when you dye you use 90% less water with zero toxic discharge (changes the cotton on a molecular level – isolates the molecule responsible for receiving or rejecting the dye in a dye bath. Yet the cotton that comes of looks feels and behaves the same)

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