There’s a lot of water in our clothes

If your jeans are dirty you put them in the wash. But water is needed long before clothes get washed. Considerable quantities of water are required for growing raw cotton and for processing cotton into a finished item of clothing.

The withdrawal of water from natural sources places a heavy burden on the environment, especially in those supplier countries of raw cotton which depend on irrigation water to meet most of their need for water. So, consumers are increasingly made aware not only of the poor working conditions in textile production, as made apparent by the recent accidents in Bangladesh, but also of the environmental burdens involved.

This STATmagazin sets out to show how much water is needed for the cotton clothes bought by consumers in Germany, explains how the virtual water content is calculated and analyses the environmental burdens that our consumption causes in the cotton-growing countries.