Waste reduction fast facts: Textiles
Garbage and recycling › Resources for schools › Fast facts about waste reduction › Textiles
This resource is not exhaustive nor is it all-inclusive, but can be cited and dated from primary and secondary sources. To find out more about the methodology or accuracy, contact the referenced source.
Metro does not validate nor endorse any of these facts.
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An estimated 10.6 million tons of textiles were generated in 2003, or 4 percent of total municipal solid waste (MSW) generation. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Municipal Solid Waste, Textiles,” Last updated Tuesday, October 29, 2002, (Accessed 8/05)
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/textile.htm -
The textile recycling industry annually prevents 2.5 billion
pounds of postconsumer textile product waste from entering the solid
waste stream, according to the Council for Textile Recycling. This 2.5
billion pounds of postconsumer textile waste represents 10 pounds for
every person in the United States. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Municipal Solid Waste, Textiles,” Last updated Tuesday, October 29, 2002 (Accessed 8/05)
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/textile.htm -
Approximately 500 million pounds of textiles collected are used
by the collecting agency, with the balance sold to textile recyclers,
including used clothing dealers and exporters, wiping rag graders, and
fiber recyclers. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Municipal Solid Waste, Textiles,” Last updated Tuesday, October 29, 2002, (Accessed 8/05)
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/textile.htm -
Nearly half of textiles discarded are contributed to charities,
according to an estimate from the Council for Textile Recycling.
Charities either give away clothes or sell them at discounted prices in
secondhand stores. About 61 percent of the clothes recovered for
second-hand use are exported to foreign countries. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Municipal Solid Waste, Textiles,” Last updated Tuesday, October 29, 2002, (Accessed 8/05)
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/textile.htm -
If all available means of reuse and recycling are utilized for
textiles, the remaining solid waste that needs to be disposed of can be
as low as 5 percent. Some recovered textiles become wiping and
polishing cloths. Cotton can be made into rags or form a component for
new high-quality paper. Other types of fabric are reprocessed into
fibers for car seat stuffing, upholstery, insulation, and even building
materials. Buttons and zippers are stripped off for reuse. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Municipal Solid Waste, Textiles,” Last updated Tuesday, October 29, 2002, (Accessed 8/05)
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/textile.htm -
More than 500 textile recycling companies handle the stream of
used textiles in the United States. As a whole, the industry employs
approximately 10,000 semi-skilled workers at the primary processing
level and creates an additional 7,000 jobs at the final processing
stage. Primary and secondary processors account for annual gross sales
of $400 million and $300 million, respectively. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Municipal Solid Waste, Textiles,” Last updated Tuesday, October 29, 2002, (Accessed 8/05)
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/textile.htm -
Trade in garment and textiles is worth $350 billion, making up
more than six percent of total world trade, and many countries are
almost totally dependent on the industry for export earnings and
manufacturing jobs. In Bangladesh for example, garments and textiles
are responsible for 95% of the country’s industrial goods exports, 1.8
million jobs and probably another 2 million workers who depend on the
sector in an indirect way for their livelihoods. –Ethical Trading Initiative, “ETI Forum, MFA Phase-Out, Who gains? Who loses?” ETI Seminar, 27 October 2004
http://www.ethicaltrade.org/Z/lib/2004/10/sem-mfa/ETI-semrep-MFAphaseout-200410.pdf -
Since 1991 the price of apparel and footwear has fallen in the
U.S. At the same time the cost of the majority of consumer goods rose
significantly. Between 1993 and 2003 the Consumer Price Index rose 28
percent while apparel saw a decline in price of 10 percent. –Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century, “Cleaning the Closet: Toward a New Fashion Ethic,” Juliet Schor, November 2002
http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/closet.pdf -
In 2000, the U.S. imported 12.65 billion pieces of apparel. It
produced another 5.3 billion domestically. That’s roughly 47.7 pieces
per person, per year. –Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century, “Cleaning the Closet: Toward a New Fashion Ethic,” Juliet Schor, November 2002
http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/closet.pdf - In the Portland metro region, carpet and clothing accounted for 10 percent of the total materials discarded in 2002. –Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Waste Composition Study, 2002
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To grow the fiber for one cotton diaper requires 105.3
gallons of water, one T-shirt needs 256.6 gallons of water, one bath
towel needs 401.4 gallons of water, a man's dress shirt requires 414.5
gallons of water, and 987 gallons of water are required for one pair of
jeans. –California Cotton Ginners and Growers Associations, “Cotton Facts,” (Accessed, 8/05)
http://www.ccgga.org/cotton_information/cotton.html
http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/closet.pdf -
The various stages of textile production (from spinning, weaving
and knitting, to dyeing and finishing) require enormous energy and
water use. For example, 26.5 gallons of water are needed to process 2.2
of textiles. –Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century, “Cleaning the Closet: Toward a New Fashion Ethic,” Juliet Schor, November 2002
http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/closet.pdf -
Together, the U.S., Brazil, China, and India currently account for 60 percent of global cotton production. –Pesticide Action Network North American, “ Control of Cotton:
The Patenting of Transgenic Cotton,” Hope Shand, Global Pesticide
Campaigner, Volume 3, Number 4, November 1993
http://www.panna.org/resources/pestis/PESTIS.burst.590.html -
In 2001, U.S. cotton growers produced 20 million bales
weighing 480 pounds each. U.S. textile manufacturers use 8 to 9 million
bales of cotton annually, enough to make nearly 2 billion pairs of
jeans. –National Cotton Women’s Committee, “Cotton Counts” (Accessed 8/05)
http://www.cotton.org/pubs/cottoncounts/resources.cfm -
Cotton is one of the largest consumers of insecticides.
Globally, twenty five percent of all insecticides consumed each year
are used on cotton. –Pesticides Action Network UK, “Pesticides Used on Cotton,” Pesticides News No. 28, June 1995
http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/pn28/pn28p23.htm -
The application of pesticides to cotton is an important issue
affecting the water quality of the southern United States. Cotton
receives as much as 7 kilograms per hectare of herbicide and 5
kilograms per hectare of insecticide. –U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Toxic
Substances Hydrology Program, “Fate and Transport of Cotton Pesticides
in the Southern United States,” Last modified on Monday, 07-Feb-2005
http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/cotton.html -
An estimated 70 percent of textile effluents and 20 percent of
dyestuffs are still dumped into water supplies by global factories. In
South India, where the highly toxic tanning industry grew rapidly in
the 1990s, local water supplies have been devastatingly polluted by
large quantities of poisonous wastes. –Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century, “Cleaning the Closet: Toward a New Fashion Ethic,” Juliet Schor, November 2002
http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/closet.pdf -
The extensive cultivation of genetically engineered cotton over
the past four years in the USA has brought no appreciable reduction in
the use of insecticides and herbicides. –No Reduction of Pesticide Use with Genetically engineered Cotton, Updated Summary of the WWF International report, Fall, 2000
http://www.biotech-info.net/WWF_inter_update.pdf