A cotton T-shirt takes roughly 2,700 litres of water to produce(spacedaily.com)
8 pointsby GordonS2 hours ago4 comments
  • sjunginmaan hour ago
    The “criticism” of the cotton sector for its, er, “excessive” water consumption has time and again been debunked as being without basis and without evidence. Worse, this argument has been flagrantly perpetuated by AI companies.

    https://texfash.com/special/cotton-s-water-myth-busted-new-g...

    Kranthi’s findings, published in the latest edition of the ICAC Recorder, argue that public perception of cotton's water use has been shaped by flawed metrics that fail to distinguish between water sources. Natural rainfall, which accounts for 75% of cotton's total water footprint, is an uncontrollable environmental factor that crops naturally utilise as part of their growth cycle.

  • jerlaman hour ago
    The founder of Soylent came to the conclusion that having polyester shirts bulk-purchased directly from China, and donating them instead of washing them, was the ecologically sensible thing to do:

    Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my used garments.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20161104001753/http://robrhineha...

    Discussion at the time (2011): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9996038

    This also may be satire.

  • memjay2 hours ago
    And people complain about AI water usage
  • maxglutean hour ago
    Typical shit

    Cotton: About ~1500 litres if you exclude rain.

    Polyester~30 litres (inclusive entire extraction chain).

    Another way to put it:

    Cotton: 750 almonds

    Polyester: 15 almonds

    5-250 California almonds

    • ThrowawayTestran hour ago
      I'd rather have a good cotton shirt than a bag of almonds.
      • maxglutean hour ago
        I'm not knocking on consumer choice. I'd rather have 5 high performance synesthetic petchem shirt summoned from fossil than a nice cotton shirt that emits more and sheds more microplastic. More to point out how stupid agriculture water use can be. Also golf courses.