DEADLY JEANS

Do we buy too many clothes? Do we have too many clothes? Let’s boycott shopping for clothes except if we really need them! Let’s help the planet! So that the world will realize that we don’t need that many clothes.

Alenka Gabrovšek Nikšič

     The clothing and fashion industry are one of the top 5 worst polluting industries in the world. Around 1.9 billions pairs of jeans are sold every year.

     One pair of jeans requires 1.5 pounds of cotton, which is bad news. It takes over 15 000 liters of water to produce the cotton for a single pair of jeans.

     The blue colour that is typical for jeans is called indigo and is nowadays made of very toxic chemicals, that are harmful to the environment and human health.

     In countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia, most large clothing brands have their factories. Most of the workforce are women, children and immigrants, who work for sometimes even16 hours a day, being paid 60€ a month.

     Shipping also adds to the crisis. Jeans are packaged in non-recycling materials, plus being transported by planes or ships. We also tend to throw our jeans away instead of recycilng or donating them, since they are so cheap.

     To help the situation, we can think before we buy something and ask ourselves if we really need it. We can check the labels on the jeans for environment friendly jeans, as well as donating our old ones to charity, or recyciling them.

Zarja, 9.a