One of Your T-Shirts Cost 11 Thousand Cups of Water

How many t-shirts do you own? If your family is like ours the answer is WAY too many. Our closets are overflowing with t-shirts from school, work, sports teams, and various events. The shocker is that it takes about 700 gallons of water to make one shirt. Over 11 thousand cups of water were used to make just one of those t-shirts, which is the equivalent of a small swimming pool.

What can you do about too many t-shirts?

Please don’t throw them away, you’ve got sustainable options.

Too Many T-Shirts

Creating clothing uses a lot of natural resources!

Water is one of the main in ingredients in t-shirt manufacturing, well at least in making the cotton fabric. Lets do a quick check on the water usage to make your t-shirt collection. First, count up the number of cotton t-shirts you own. An estimated seven hundred gallons of water are required to manufacture a single t-shirt. Let see how it adds up in comparison to how much water you drink for an example twenty five t-shirts.

25 t-shirts X 700 gallons = 17,500 gallons of water

Compare that amount of water to how much water you drink. If you drink eight cups of water a day, then you drink about one hundred eighty three gallons of water per year.

17,500 gallons / 183 gallons per year = 96 years of drinking water

That means your 25 t-shirts could provide you lifetime of drinking water.

Water is just one part of the waste

The wastefulness of our society is clear, with eighty-four percent of clothing ending up in landfills or incinerators. According to recent data, the volume of clothing discarded in the US has doubled in the past two decades, reaching an alarming fourteen million tons. Discarded clothing from the US and other wealthy countries inundate foreign countries. Every year, Ghana is flooded with billions of garments, transforming the nation into a dumping ground for undesired items, which often end up in landfills, leading to a waste crisis.

For the rest of the world, it is out of sight and out of mind, showing that fast fashion harms many who are not even part of the supply chain. There are aways to make better use of too many t-shirts as well as avoiding more in the future.

How can you help?

Challenge yourself to go on a consumer diet. Do you really need one more? Just say no to that next freebie
Every time you want to buy an item, jot it down, and take your time. After a week check in with yourself to see if you really still need it or want it.
Trade with a friend.
Upcycle through websites like Poshmark, Mercari, eBay, and ThredUp. Ready for something vintage or new. Check these sites out as well.
Recycle your cotton t-shirts with Re-Spun https://www.marinelayer.com/pages/respun For each tee you will receive a $5 credit up to $25.
Check in to local causes that need items for fundraising. You might just have a hidden treasure in your t-shirt bundle that can raise money for a good cause.