Global production has significantly boosted since 1994 and T-shirts are the most common garments in the world.

Let's consider how it is produced and its impact on the environment. Firstly, cotton seeds are sown, irrigated, and grown for the fluffy bolls after harvested by machines. The cotton plants require a huge quantity of water - 2,700 liters of water are needed to produce the average t-shirt. Moreover, cotton uses more insecticides and pesticides than any other crop. These pollutants can be carcinogenic, harm the health of workers, and damage surrounding ecosystems. Once cotton bales leave the farms, textile mills ship them to a spinning facility, when using high-tech machines the cotton twisted into ropes. Then yarns are sent to the mill, where it is weaved into sheets of rough grayish fabric and treated with heat and chemicals until it turns soft and white. Here, the fabric is dipped into commercial bleaches and azo dyes which make up the vivid coloring in most textiles. Unfortunately, some of them extremely harmful, usually these chemicals cause widespread contamination when released as toxic wastewater in rivers and oceans. However, there are  T-shirts that are made from organic cotton grown without pesticides and insecticides but it accounts a very low percentage. Next, the finished cloth travels to factories in order to be stitched into t-shirts. After the manufacture, all these t-shirts travel by ship, train, and trucks - a process that gives an enormous cotton footprint. Some countries produce their own clothing domestically which cut out this polluting stage.

 

Finally, in the consumer's house, the T-shirt goes through one of the most resource-intensive phrases of its lifetime. The average household does nearly 400 loads of laundry per year, each using 40 gallons of water. Also washing machines and dryers use energy. All these turned fashion into the second-largest polluted in the world after oil. 

However, there are things we can do: try to look for textiles made from recycled or organic fabrics, line dry to save resources. Instead of throwing them away - donate, recycle, or reuse them as cleaning rags. Additionally, we might ask ourselves how many t-shirts and articles of clothing will we consume over our lifetime and try to decrease numbers.

Sources: https://images.app.goo.gl/cnph1o9nBvM8qCHQA

https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-life-cycle-of-a-t-shirt-angel-chang