MUD Jeans x PLAN3T: The Impact of Denim in Fashion

This blog post was created in cooperation with MUD Jeans and contains a product advertisement for MUD Jeans. However, many of the tips listed here can also be applied to your favourite Denim or any other jeans you have at home. Let's go!

We all wear clothes, whether you wake up, stick your hand in the closet and wear whatever is on top of the pile, or religiously read Vogue and your walk-in closet is the closest thing to heaven. The latter may have higher levels of consumption than the former, but all clothes have an environmental price.

Here are some key facts on the impact of Fashion[1]:

• The Fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions and is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply.
• The Fashion industry is responsible for 4% of the worlds waste production
• 85% of textiles go into landfills each year. That is enough to fill the Sydney harbour annually
• 35% of all microplastics originate from the laundering of systematic textiles like polyester
• The production, transport, and use - washing, drying, and ironing - of clothing alone causes more than 850 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions every year.
• Synthetic fibres are made from non-renewable petroleum. If you include the fossil fuel used to produce the polymer, the CO₂ emissions for polyester are almost three times as high as for cotton.

Much like many of our environmental issues, the impact of fashion is driven by the over-extraction of natural resources, toxic production methods, overconsumption driven by fast fashion brands, and the unsustainable fashion culture of buy, wear once, and throw away.

Many of you will find it shocking when I tell you that your favourite pair of jeans is the most polluting item of clothing in your wardrobe. Denim needs a lot of cotton, water, and toxic chemicals to be produced.

• Cotton is one of the thirstiest commodities on the planet
• While cotton only takes up 2.5% of the worlds agricultural land it uses up to 16% of the world’s insecticides
• On average a standard pair of jeans can consume between 7,000 -10,000 litres of water
• Conventional denim manufacturers use toxic dyes and nasty chemicals such as sodium hydroxide, potassium permanganate, and bleach. All of these are dumped in rivers, lakes, and oceans causing devastating effects.

It takes two to tango

A lot of work has gone into calculating the environmental footprint of clothes. The impact of clothes varies depending on the materials used and how they are produced.

Going back to the denim industry, brands such as MUD Jeans, a circular denim brand that collects back their used jeans to make new jeans can produce denim with a minimal impact. This is not only because of their circular business model an because they produce jeans that contain up to 40% post-consumer recycled cotton and use zero toxic chemicals. The outcome is a pair of MUD jeans that uses 93% less water, 74% fewer CO₂ and that has a 51% lower biodiversity impact than the industry standard.

However, when the jeans are sold the responsibility of the environmental impact of those jeans is passed on to the customer. The most important one is the customer's commitment to send back the jeans once they are done using them. This way the brand can ensure that the raw materials don’t end up as waste, and further harming the planet. Instead, the material can be used over and over again.

The recently released MUD Jeans 2020 Sustainability report also depicted the environmental impact that customers can have on the product depending on their washing practices. If the MUD Jeans owner washes their jeans once a month in a cold wash and line dries them the annual impact of that pair of jeans is at a low 0,74 kg of CO₂e. However, should the owner choose to wash the jeans every week, with hot water and then tumble dry, the individual impact of those jeans rise to a whopping 33,98 kg of  CO₂e in one year. That is 5.5 times more than the original impact of the jeans themselves. The moral of the story: how you take care of your clothes makes a difference.

How to minimize your fashion impact wearing your pair of denim.

There are multiple ways that you can minimize your fashion impact. First rule; the most sustainable item is the one you own. The key is in taking care of them.

How to do this:

• Mend and fix any damages: There is nothing that YouTube can’t teach you. Trust us small fixes are easy. If you are interested in something more complex, visit your local tailor or ask your grandma.
• Be conscious of how you wash your clothes: To ensure low environmental cost and a long-lasting product wash your clothes at 30 degrees, with a gentle sustainable soap and line dry.
• Inside out: to conserve the colour of your jeans turn them inside out

For the true denim lovers:

• Air wash: Don’t use a washing machine at all! Just hang your clothes outside for a night. The fresh air that breezes through your clothes will make your clothes smell fresh the next morning. This conserves the quality and colour of your denim fabric.
• Freeze it! Using the freezer to clean your clothes could be an experiment. Especially jeans or sensitive garments, such as wool or silk will thank you. The low temperatures will kill bacteria and prevent your clothes from smelling.

Take on the challenge:

• MUD Jeans and PLAN3T have set up a challenge in the PLAN3T App, with which you can track your CO₂ footprint during the washing of the jeans.
• An average household washes Jeans once a week in the warm wash and thus creates 8,7 kg of CO₂e per year/per jeans.
• If you wash your jeans once a month using cold wash programs, you have the potential to save 7,96 kg of CO₂e per year and only emit 0,74 kg of CO₂e per year for washing your jeans.
• Are you a tumble dry user? The app will include a challenge to skip this process and save an estimated 31.8 Kg of CO₂ per year/per jeans.
• You find the challenge in the PLAN3T App (Link) (only available in German App Stores)

If you want to know more about how much CO₂ you can save with a change or two in your everyday life, then start your challenges with the PLAN3T app today. Reduce as much CO₂ as you can and track your successes every Sunday. And the great thing is: for every challenge you complete, we will reward you with PLAN3T coins that you can redeem at our sustainable partners, such as MUD Jeans. We hope you have fun trying out the challenges and realize how impactful small changes can be.

If you want to learn more about the impact of fast fashion, you may like to read this article from us.

You can find everything about sustainable textile labels here