We all love our jeans, despite the fact that they represent a huge, and really, unacceptable, carbon footprint. Most experts agree that the production process for denim is not only wasteful, it is polluting. Why? Well, according to The 71Percent, “To create a pair of blue jeans, about 1,800 gallons of water are needed just to grow enough cotton for one pair.” A Penn State report adds, “And that’s just in terms of growing cotton, when you take into account the dye process as well as the machine wash almost 9,982 gallons of water are used.” And then let’s talk about water contamination due to dyes getting into our water sources. And then let’s talk about the carbon footprint of shipping those jeans around the globe! Yikes.

But the good news for jeans lovers is that there is a lot of activity underway to minimize the environmental impact of denim. This includes the effort by some brands and manufacturers, including Levi’s and SAI-TEX in Viet Nam, to produce denim using 100% recycled water. In fact, Levi’s reports, “We recently made 100,000 pairs of Levi’s® women’s jeans with 100 percent recycled water. End result: We saved some 12 million liters of this vital resource, enough to fill almost five Olympic-size swimming pools.” The company as issued a standard for water recycling that it says applies to water recycling and reuse in apparel manufacturing and has become a requirement for its supplier factories worldwide.

Some equipment manufacturers are also working to do their part as well. The EFI Reggiani Mezzera DENIM line, for example, reduces chemical usage in the dyeing process by up to 40%. The company informed me that based on data collected from actual Mezzera Loop lines in operation as compared to conventional slasher lines, water use is reduced by up to 30%, plus there is a reduction in wastewater treatment. Additionally, their DENIM process uses up to 40% less electricity and consumes up to 20% less indigo than slasher lines. Slasher, or sheet, dyeing combines dyeing and sizing into a single process. Warp yarns are repeatedly passed in warp beam form through several baths of indigo dye before being sized and wound for weaving.