Our planet is facing a climate crisis due to a non-sustainable human impact on it. Our climate footprint has modified the environment completely, generating several issues that are hurting and damaging our planet and those who are living on it.
Water depletion and raw materials scarcity is one of the most impacting activities that humans are creating. Obtaining water, wood, food, fossil fuels, and many more resources to feed human industries is destroying and polluting the natural environment.
The water depletion is currently affecting non-desertic areas of our planet. We normally connect this problem to the Sahara desert, among others, but nowadays, water scarcity is affecting also other areas such as the South of Europe. According to the EEA (European Environment Agency) and its WEI+ index, which compares water use against renewable resources in a country, in 2019, the first 7 countries that lead their WEI+ index were located in the South of Europe, overcoming >40%.
2019 Water scarcity conditions for European countries measured in WEI+, EEA
Some of the most important reasons for the water scarcity are:
- Pollution: There are many different causes of pollution that increase water depletion. Some of the most important ones are the pesticides and the fertilizers used in farming or the non-treated industrial waste. These toxic substances make fresh water toxic, filling it with bacteria that damage ecosystems.
- Agriculture: Agriculture is currently using 70% of the world’s fresh water and, most of them, could be saved by optimizing irrigation systems. Most of the food producers’ countries are being affected by global warming, which reduces rain and their rivers, lakes, or lagoons are drying, so investing in better systems of irrigation will be a must for them in the future.
- Population Growth: During the last 50 years, the human population has increased by more than 50%, accompanied by economic and industrial development, aggravating the human footprint in freshwater ecosystems.
Water is needed in different production chains of textile products. According to the European Union data, a single t-shirt production requires 2.700 liters of water, which equals what a human drinks for more than 2 years. This huge amount of water that the textile industry requires for just 1 garment, multiplied by the overconsumption demand that the market is asking for and other industries’ water consumption has produced a situation where several countries are limiting water access to companies and individuals.
The textile industry is, by far, one of the biggest water-demanding industries in the world. Reports from 2020 assume that the fashion industry is the third largest source of water depletion, just before the food industry and recreation and culture. One of the biggest issues that the industry faces is water pollution. Plastic-based materials, such as Polyester, can discharge up to 700.000 microplastic fibers that end up into the water. If this water is not correctly treated, this polluted water arrives in animals and, finally, into the human food chain.
The future of the textile industry involves circularity to preserve our water ecosystems and reduce its climate footprint. Solutions such as deadstock marketplaces or recycled and recyclable fabrics will grow in the following years. According to 2023 Recovo’s Circularity Report for the Fashion Industry in Spain, more than 50% of the Spanish fashion brands’ objectives for 2024 is increasing their use of recycled fabrics in their collections. Incorporating these types of materials into a brand’s supply chain saves several liters of water from production and manufacturing by the usage of leftover fabrics, reducing the industry’s water consumption and its climate footprint.
- Promoting recycled materials: Producing and manufacturing fibers, fabrics, and other textile-related materials is, by far, the most water-demanding for the industry. Recycled and recyclable quality have increased during the last years, making them even more attractive than other traditional and non-circular fabrics.
- Improving stock management: Textile waste is one of the biggest environmental threats that the fashion industry produces. Improving internal stock management and reusing existing leftover fabrics with solutions such as Recovo’s CiMS will reduce a company’s textile waste and consumption, reducing its production costs and environmental impact.
- Use of organic plant-based fiber fabrics: Synthetic and plastic-based fibers pollute water while producing and even washing them, diluting microplastics into water. Avoiding them and choosing plant-based alternatives is going to make the garments eco-friendlier reducing this microplastic production.
- Improving production processes: Technology has provided new methodologies and machinery that reduce its impact, increasing its efficiency and resource utilization. Fast fashion and other low-price fashion alternatives often choose some of the cheapest manufacturing solutions, which are normally less efficient and demanding than other alternatives.
- Educating consumers: Consumers have one of the important responsibilities to change the fashion industry, so circularity brands must promote and educate their consumers to acquire circular behaviors such as valuing sustainable alternatives, to reducing consumption, among others.
Water is probably the most important resource for humanity, what makes us evolve and appear on this planet, but the last industrial revolutions have boosted non-sustainable practices that polluted this precious resource and its environment. We have seen how lagoons are drying or even disappearing and how humans and their manufacturing waste have polluted some of the biggest rivers in the world at the same time when global temperatures are increasing and rains-days are reducing all around the world.
We are facing one of the most water-demanding decades of the entire humanity, so taking care of this resource is one of our priorities for us. Fortunately, society’s increasing commitment to the environment has motivated new solutions, behaviors, and even technological improvements with the main objective is to saving water and preserving its sources.
Recovo creates circular solutions for the fashion industry. We cover various aspects of the circular economy for brands:
Based in Barcelona, we have a global mission with our websites in Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian, French, dutch, German
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