Why clothes have such a big footprint
Making clothes is resource-hungry. A single cotton t-shirt can take around 2,700 litres of water to produce, roughly what one person drinks in three years, while a pair of jeans can run to 7,500 litres once you include growing and processing the cotton. Add dyeing, shipping and the energy behind it all, and every new garment carries a measurable carbon cost too.
How we estimate your footprint
We multiply the number of items you buy by widely cited per-garment averages for production water and lifecycle carbon, then translate the totals into everyday terms, bathtubs of water and kilometres driven, so the numbers mean something. They're approximations, not a lab measurement, but they're good enough to compare habits.
The one change that matters most
You don't have to buy nothing. The biggest lever is keeping clothes in use longer: extending a garment's life from one year to two can roughly halve its annual footprint. Buying better, wearing more and repairing beats buying more and binning.
- Run new buys through the 30 wears test.
- Build a cohesive capsule so you shop less by design.
- Choose quality and care for it, wash cooler, line-dry, repair.
- Buy second-hand and pass things on rather than throwing them away.