By Olivia Pinnock

Did you hear the one about how fashion is the second most polluting industry after oil? What about the one where fashion accounts for 10% of the world’s carbon emissions? How about the fact that we buy 60% more clothes than we did 15 years ago, but keep them for half as long?

As a journalist and university lecturer in the field of sustainable fashion, I’m constantly searching for statistics to evidence my work, and ensure I’m reporting the truth. Many, like the ones above, I have found to be, at best, overly simplistic and outdated, and, at worst, unfounded.

Many come from reports, books or documentaries that were released ten, sometimes twenty, years ago. Others lead you down a long chain of references only to end up at dead links or sources with no research credentials.

So, does it really take 2,700 litres of water to make a t-shirt? It’s a statistic I’ve heard a lot but not one I’d dug into before. I decided to find out, and it turned out to be perhaps the most unreliable example yet.

This statistic can be found on the websites of the European Parliament, Oxfam and WWF, as well as in articles by the BBC and The Guardian. The European Parliament credits the figure to WWF, linking to a page that no longer exists. The WWF page that shows up in search results was published in 2014 and doesn’t credit a source. I also found another WWF article from 2011 claiming it can take up to 20,000 litres of water to make a t-shirt, again without a cited source.

I then modified my search to see whether others had questioned this statistic or found the original source. Here came the plot twist.

Analyst and sustainable fashion consultant Veronica Bates Kassatly found that the origins of many oft-repeated facts about cotton’s footprint came from an unlikely place. She published her findings in Apparel Insider magazine in 2021. Her investigation led back to a 2009 marketing campaign promoting a new waterless printing technology. The catch? The technology only works on polyester.

As part of that campaign, a blog was launched that emphasised how such technology could save water, positioning polyester as a potential ‘green’ alternative.

It wasn’t actually that campaign which first published the 2,700-litre statistic, but Kassatly found it appeared soon after in sustainability marketing from other groups in the early 2010s. These repeated many of the same claims and skewed statistics without citing research methodology. Kassatly said she reached out to verify the figures but did not receive a response. One of those statistics? Yep. That it takes 2,700 litres of water to make one t-shirt. 

It’s no coincidence that there’s a lack of robust data about fashion’s environmental footprint. I can find plenty of reliable statistics about the economics of the fashion industry, because those can be packaged and sold to companies to help them boost their profits. But few major players are willing to pay for in-depth research into the problems their industry creates.

And even the most well-researched statistics can be skewed to say what you want them to. In this instance, what began as critical messaging about cotton has since been reframed as a way to raise awareness of fashion’s wider impact and to promote organic cotton. So, does it matter if it’s true or not?

In an age of disinformation and misinformation, I believe it matters more than ever. In a political climate where facts are twisted and misrepresented to create division, it’s important that sustainable fashion isn’t a part of that.

If the statistics we have about the collective impact of fashion are vague, conflicting and unreliable, it makes it easier for those with the power to change things to shrug their shoulders at the issue.

It might be time to retire some of these statistics and push for better, more reliable data — but there is also a grain of truth in the ones we currently have that’s worth holding on to.

In this instance, we know that cotton is a thirsty crop and that disaster can occur if we don’t manage its farming carefully. This is perhaps why the statistic is repeated so much, but there are better ways to tell the story.

Just look at the Aral Sea. Once the world’s fourth largest freshwater lake, it began shrinking in the 1960s due to irrigation for cotton farming, and almost completely dried up before an intervention to save it.

This tells us a powerful truth: that clothing, cotton and water are precious resources worth preserving.

In post-Enlightenment, Western culture, we have come to rely on numbers and science as the only truth. While this has helped us in many ways, there are other ways to communicate the truth.

We need to commission more reliable research, we need to be careful in citing credible sources when we do reach for facts, but we also need to embrace softer information as truth. The real stories about how our clothes are made, and the values of the people we support with our purchases, matter.

For me, the story of the Aral Sea is far more moving than a statistic. It shows the implications of fashion production on human, animal and plant life, and it also offers hope in that we can restore nature from the damage we have done.

A statistic cannot tell me about the quality of life of the people who made my t-shirt, or the innovation and creative process behind it.

And water-use statistics vary tremendously depending on where the cotton was grown, the farming techniques used, and the practices of the facilities it is processed in. To boil it down to one universal number is to deny the information we need to do better.

Does it take 2,700 litres of water to make a single t-shirt? You’ll need to hear its story to find out.