Inventor of Blue Jeans Channels a New Water-Saving Idea
Levi Strauss and a few other clothing makers are finally coming around to location-specific water reduction targets — saving more where the resource is scarce.
The garment industry is infamous for wasting water. One of its biggest names is now using a more rigorous method to tackle the problem in the far reaches of its supply chain. Levi Strauss & Co. has been forced to address water scarcity more aggressively than most, thanks to the great thirst of the jeans-making process. In the journey from cotton field to factory to closet, a single pair of jeans has been known to consume up to 3,800 liters of water. Not a good look for a consumer-facing brand.
As part of a wider water-saving effort, the San Francisco-based company, which invented blue jeans in 1873, has become an early pioneer of a method known drily as “contextual water targets.” The idea is that saving a liter of water where it’s plentiful is less important than saving a liter where it’s scarce. It means Levi Strauss must move more forcefully to curb water use at its Egyptian factories, say, than its US plants, even though saving water in the US may be easier to achieve.