Dye Me A River - Textiles and Water Pollution (Pt. 1)

Rivers of life are dying at the expense of our closets.

As we rock our colourful garments, dyes and chemicals are staining our waters, turning them black and unusable for both humans and wildlife.

It is known that the fashion industry contributes up to one-fifth of industrial water pollution. Wastewater from textile manufacturing not only hurts our environment by altering water chemistry, but it also renders water sources impotable. Simultaneously, the industry also utilizes a large amount of water in its production, further depleting clean waters that are available. In fact, according to Vogue, fashion production uses about 93 cubic metres of water annually. That's equivalent to 37 million Olympic-sized pools!

As compared to air and solid waste pollution mentioned in my previous posts, the issue of water pollution is much more extensive. As Holkar et. al. (2017) informs us, this is particularly so considering the fact that the biggest source of effluent wastewater in the world comes from textile production.

What is water pollution?

The Harvard School of Public Health defines water pollution as a contamination of water sources which causes them to be unusable for drinking, cleaning and other activities. These pollutants can be in the form of chemicals, waste, bacteria and others.

During textile production, processes of dyeing and finishing contribute most significantly to water pollution. Dyeing binds colour pigments to fabrics to give them their vibrant look while finishing on the other hand alters the final quality of textiles. This can include procedures such as bleaching, softening and making the material anti-wrinkle and water resistant.

Altogether, production of these textiles generates a toxic mixture of carcinogenic chemicals, dyes and salts and the most convenient way to get rid of such wastewater is to dump it into nearby rivers and lakes. Although the World Bank has identified that not all chemicals and solvents used are hazardous, a good 72 toxic ones are derived from textile dyeing alone — heavy metals like zinc, copper and chrome are just some examples.

A Big, Complicated Problem

Water is the source of life and polluted water eventually finds itself everywhere.

While the production of textiles and areas of water contamination tend to be concentrated in countries such as Bangladesh, the effects of water pollution extends itself to the global market. For example, chemical-laden waterways destroy biodiversity of these areas, which leads to a change in dynamics of wider ecosystems. Not only so, with water used to irrigate our crops, it is likely to end up in the vegetables and fruits we eventually consume (Sandeep et al., 2019). What we have here is thus a complex web of impacts which extends to a global scale. Then as Sakamoto et al. (2019) explain, the substances are not biodegradable and remain in our environment for extended periods of time. Thus, the issue of water pollution from textiles is also one that is long term, making it even harder but all the more important to overcome.

COMING UP

As I have briefly summarized above, water pollution as a result of the fashion industry is one that is highly complex. In my next post, I will continue to cover the impacts and wider implications of water pollution. Hopefully, this is able to open up more perspectives as we try to navigate around the intricate web of consequences resulting from our fashion industry.

References

Chan, E. (2020, 22 March). The fashion industry is using up too much water — here's how you can reduce your H2O footprint. Vogue. Retrieved from https://www.vogue.in/fashion/content/the-fashion-industry-is-using-up-too-much-water-heres-how-you-can-reduce-your-h2o-footprint.

Granskog, A., Laizet, F., Lobis, M., & Sawers, C. (2020, 23 July). Biodiversity: The next frontier in sustainable fashion. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/biodiversity-the-next-frontier-in-sustainable-fashion.

Harvard School of Public Health. (n.d.). Water Pollution. Retrieved from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ehep/82-2/.

Sandeep, G., Vijayalatha, K. R., & Anitha, T. (2019). Heavy metals and its impact in vegetable crops. International Journal of Chemical Studies, 7(1), 1612-1621.

Sakamoto, M., Ahmed, T., Begum, S., & Huq, H. (2019). Water pollution and the textile industry in Bangladesh: flawed corporate practices or restrictive opportunities?. Sustainability, 11(7), 1951.

Regan, H. (2020, 29 September). Asian rivers are turning black, and our colorful closets are to blame.CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/dyeing-pollution-fashion-intl-hnk-dst-sept/index.html

United Nations Environment Programme. (2018, 12 November). Putting the brakes of fast fashion. Retrieved from https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/putting-brakes-fast-fashion.