Climate ‘experts’ now say jeans are bad for the environment: report

According to the Daily Mail, researchers from the Guangdong University of Technology analyzed the carbon footprint of traditional jeans as well as “fast fashion” jeans, a category of jeans only worn by a consumer an average of seven times.

Fast fashion jeans, characterized by their rapid production, transportation, and disposal, were found to produce approximately 11 times more CO2 emissions than jeans worn more frequently. In contrast, traditional jeans, which are worn an average of 120 times, exhibited a significantly smaller carbon footprint.

The study found that wearing a single pair of fast-fashion jeans once generates the same amount of CO2 emissions as driving a gas-powered car for approximately 6.4 miles.

“The humble wardrobe staple – a pair of jeans – has a significant impact on the environment,” said Dr. Ya Zhou, the lead author of the study.

“Such overconsumption has led to a significant increase in resource and energy consumption in the clothing industry by accelerating the entire clothing supply chain, including the production, logistics, consumption and disposal processes, thereby exacerbating the clothing industry's impact on climate change,” said Dr. Zhou.

One notable aspect highlighted in the study is the significant contribution of activities such as washing, drying, and ironing to the carbon footprint of traditional jeans. These post-purchase activities account for almost half of the total carbon footprint of traditional jeans. But for fast fashion jeans, most of the carbon footprint came from production and transportation.

The fashion industry is responsible for ten percent of all global emissions, according to the Daily Mail.

In response to these findings, the researchers suggested that consumers instead buy jeans or other pieces of clothing from second-hand stores, as it can reduce carbon emissions by roughly 90%.