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With many shops closed due to pandemic restrictions, Black Friday 2020 might have looked different from the frantic buying sprees of years past. But one thing remained the same: the relentless pace of fast fashion. Environmentalists criticized one UK retailer for selling a dress for 8p online.

What are the costs of making garments so cheap? Well, consider an item of clothing we’re all likely to wear at some point – the t-shirt. Like the 8p dress, t-shirts belong to an industry responsible for 10% of global CO₂ emissions.

Depending on the brand of t-shirt you’re wearing, you could be contributing to these emissions and a long list of other environmental and social harms. But to understand these impacts, we must explore the supply chain that creates them.

Most t-shirts are made from cotton, which is grown in 80 countries by 25 million farmers who produced a total of 25.9 million tonnes of fiber between 2018 and 2019. Conventional cotton farming consumes 6% of the world’s pesticides, even though it only uses 2.4% of the world’s land. These chemicals control pests like pink bollworms, but they can also poison other wildlife and people. Farmers tend to use large amounts of synthetic fertilizer to maximize the amount of cotton they grow, which can degrade soil and pollute rivers.

More than 70% of global cotton production comes from irrigated farms and it takes one-and-a-half Olympic swimming pools of water to grow one tonne of cotton. Your t-shirt could have used 7,000 liters of water just to grow the cotton it’s made from. That’s a lot of water for one t-shirt, especially when you consider that cotton is a crop that tends to be grown in regions plagued by drought. The farmer may have only 10l to 20l of water a day for washing, cleaning, and cooking.

It’s a myth that fast fashion clothing is necessarily poor quality. Many brands do create durable products, some lasting twice as long as designer label equivalents that are up to ten times more expensive.

A growing number of businesses are trying to minimize the environmental impact of their clothes. Some UK brands have begun sourcing cotton which is less reliant on pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers and consumes less water. Enough high-quality cotton can be grown to meet current demand with much less water and pesticides.

Cold pad batch dyeing uses up to 50% less water, energy, and chemicals than standard processes and produces much less waste. Voluntary initiatives, such as the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, are trying to set minimum standards for quality across the industry.

You can make a difference too. Buying from trustworthy brands is a good start, and only washing the garment when needed. Once you’re done with your clothes, giving them to clothing charities offers them a second life and makes fashion overall much greener.

Hopefully knowing more about the vast effort and resources that go into making our clothes can help people make better choices as well. Before throwing old clothes out, remember the long and costly journey your t-shirt took from cotton to wardrobe, and think again.