WASTING WATER ON CLOTHES

Why we shouldn’t lose our hoodies! 

I’m sure we all know not to waste water on things like pre-rising plates or even simpler things but what about clothes? What about our hoodies? Being a barely known factor to our water crisis, it’s time everybody knows. Personally, in my home we didn’t know or even begin to consider clothes. Quite frankly I believe we should all be on the same page because of the effect it has on climate change, diseases it causes and obviously the sheer amount of water it takes to produce a single item of clothing.

To begin with, our water footprint is contributing to climate change. It’s hard to give a precise percentage but the numbers speak for themselves. Fascinatingly, there is 12 thousand and 60 million trillion litres of water on earth and a simple T-shirt takes 2700 litres of water to make. Considering the amount of clothes made every year and the fact that more complicated items of clothing take more water, then it really doesn’t look that good. Furthermore, our oceans create 50% of our oxygen and without them we will not be able to survive. We’ve been killing our oceans slowly and as a consequence we will slowly start to die.

Moreover, the effect on local communities near factories. Sadly, quite a few clothing companies take most of the clean water they can find in the area leaving locals with tiny to no water. Afterwards any clean water left gets contaminated by the now dirty excess water. Unfortunately, locals are forced to drink unclean water. Shortly afterwards they get very ill and most die. Some of the diseases they can get are cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio. The worst bit is that this wouldn’t nearly happen as much if we bought hand me downs (op-shop) and didn’t damage or lose our clothes so often.

Finally, the amount of water it takes to make clothes. Like I stated earlier to make a simple T-shirt it takes 2700 litres of water. Of course, for different items of clothing it would take different amounts of water but with the 2700 litres to make a T-shirt you could make 90 mugs of tea! All jokes aside, 2700 litres is a lot of water. Moreover, we make enough T-shirts every year for everyone on Earth to have 27 each! The amount of water is so big that if you search it up on google it doesn’t come up. All we really need to know is that whatever that number is, it is way too big. That clean water could save millions.

So now you see why I believe we shouldn’t lose our hoodies and waste water from buying more clothes. With the three fabulous reasons for climate change, diseases and the sheer amount of water it takes to make clothes surely we’re all on the same page. Be part of the solution not the problem!

Poppy B – Year 5 Room 47