{"id":21407,"date":"2017-09-26T00:05:42","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T07:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/?post_type=custom_features&p=21407"},"modified":"2024-01-25T09:21:29","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T17:21:29","slug":"saving-ocean-one-outfit-time","status":"publish","type":"custom_features","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/features\/saving-ocean-one-outfit-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Saving the Ocean One Outfit at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Around the world, people buy about 80 billion new garments a year, and Americans alone throw out 15 million tonnes of clothing. Global fast-fashion companies are having a heyday, with Zara owner Inditex and Swedish giant H&M posting massive sales and regularly ranking on Forbes\u2019s list of most-profitable fashion companies<\/a>. Clothes have never been cheaper, and anyone can look like an Instagram fashionista or a GQ<\/em> model for the cost of a couple of medium pizzas.<\/p>\n

But this disposable fashion is the result of a global supply chain that hides the true cost of garments. While many companies tout their environmental responsibility, follow their supply chains far enough and you\u2019ll find a labyrinth of independent mills and factories where fabric is woven, dyed, and sewn under sometimes-abysmal conditions. As a rule, fashion companies don\u2019t own these factories, and may not even have direct contact with them, limiting their influence. Above all, these supply chains are nimble. If labor or environmental regulations tighten up in one place, as happened in Cambodia in 2017<\/a>, buyers may just shift to a cheaper, more competitive locale.<\/p>\n

Here at Hakai Magazine<\/em>, we\u2019re taking a closer look at the impacts of fast fashion on our oceans and rivers. It turns out that a few keystone materials in those fall lookbooks spell particular trouble for the coast.<\/p>\n

Cotton<\/h2>\n
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Illustration by Kristen Joy Baker<\/p><\/div>\n

Over a garbled Skype connection, Shafiq Ahmad speaks of a time when people could drink the groundwater near his home in Pakistan. \u201cBut now we can\u2019t use it,\u201d Ahmad says. The water is unsafe, and the culprit, he says, is runoff from crops contaminated with pesticides. One of those crops is cotton, which can be found in a large proportion of fast-fashion garments.<\/p>\n

Ahmad is Pakistan\u2019s country manager for the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), an NGO that works with farmers on the ground to fix some of the environmental issues related to cotton agriculture. One major issue is the impact the crop can have on the region\u2019s water.<\/p>\n

Textiles and cotton farming are big industries in Pakistan. The country is the world\u2019s fourth-largest cotton producer after China, India, and the United States. Pakistan\u2019s cotton crop consumes close to 20 trillion liters of water\u2014equivalent to the capacity of more than eight million Olympic swimming pools\u2014every year from the country\u2019s lifeblood, the Indus River.<\/p>\n

And the Indus is in trouble.<\/p>\n

The river is born in the glaciers that cloak the mountain ranges north of Pakistan, the Himalayas and the Karakoram. From there it flows southward into Pakistan, where barrages and dams capture the precious water and divert it into tributaries and canals heading toward communities and farms. A staggering 75 percent of the Indus River\u2019s water goes to canals for farming. By the time the river reaches its delta, it\u2019s barely a trickle.<\/p>\n

When the first industrial-scale dams were opened on the Indus in the mid-20th century, they sharply reduced the flow of water and sediment that continually replenished the Indus\u2019s huge delta. Deprived of material, the sea began eroding the delta, up to 12 square kilometers per year since 1944. Salty water has pushed dozens of kilometers inland. Farmers and fishermen in the once-lush delta have witnessed the consequences of the sea\u2019s incursion\u2014the disappearance of the mangroves and freshwater fisheries that rely on mangroves for habitat. Meanwhile, climate change shrinks the Himalayan glaciers that supply the Indus, and increases the frequency and severity of drought in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

The \u201cwater wars\u201d hypothesis appears not so farfetched. As fresh water becomes scarcer around the world, it will become more precious and conflict over it will lead to violence, much as valuable oil contributed to conflicts such as the Gulf War. Cotton is far from the sole cause of the Indus\u2019s woes. But it does need a lot of water and it\u2019s become deeply interwoven with Pakistan\u2019s economy, with hundreds of thousands of people relying on cotton and textiles for a living.<\/p>\n