Cotton's Water Problem
A single conventional T-shirt takes about 2,700 litres of water to produce. A pair of jeans: around 10,000.
One of the Thirstiest Crops on the Planet
Cotton occupies just 2.5% of global farmland, yet requires 10,000–20,000 litres of water per kilogram of fiber depending on farming method and irrigation. Multiplied across the industry, that adds up fast.
The Aral Sea
The clearest case study: once the world's fourth-largest lake, the Aral Sea was essentially drained between the 1960s and 1990s to irrigate Soviet cotton fields. What was once a 68,000 square-kilometre body of water is now mostly desert — fishing villages today sit 150 kilometres from where the shoreline used to be.
Pesticides and Pollution
Conventional cotton uses roughly 16% of all insecticides and 7% of all herbicides applied globally — on just 2.5% of farmland. Downstream, textile dyeing and finishing accounts for approximately 20% of all industrial water pollution worldwide.
It Doesn't Have to Stay This Way
Different farming approaches target different parts of this footprint: organic cotton removes synthetic pesticides entirely, recycled cotton skips new farming altogether, and regenerative cotton can cut water use by 30–50% while actively restoring soil carbon.
