Typically when we think about the relationship between water and clothes it’s about which rinse cycle to use on laundry day. Think again, industrial textile production affects water in ways that outlast the lifetime of fashion or clothes.
Non-organic cotton crops heavily use pesticides and fertilizers. These pollutants make their way into rivers and ground water, threatening fish, food and families and the water we use for drinking and food preparation. Ingestion of pesticides can cause nervous system ailments, cancer, even death, particularly among children. As it happens, dependence on ground water is more prevalent in cotton-producing and manufacturing countries such as Pakistan and China.