25-04-2025
Water Baseline Remains Elusive for the Denim Industry
While companies are aligned in wanting to reduce water consumption in denim production, the amount of water it requires to make a pair of jeans continues to be debatable.
At Kingpins Amsterdam, representatives from denim mills, chemical companies and technology firms discussed their strategies to measure water consumption. While annual sustainability reports, universal measurement tools, and other transparency-promoting platforms can help establish a common baseline, they explained that certain factors beyond their control make it challenging to achieve true alignment.
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Efforts to significantly improve water resource and wastewater management in Crystal International Group's denim factories in Cambodia and Vietnam are advancing the company closer to reaching its goal. The company aims to reduce its freshwater consumption by 20 percent by 2030, compared to an internal 2022 baseline.
However, water usage varies across factories because production processes and the methodology to calculate consumption are all different, said Janet Lui, senior manager, design and product development, denim division, for Crystal International Group.
Without a common baseline, Lui said factories create their own. 'At this moment, we still need to compare internally, factory by factory,' she said. 'But in the future, who knows? I think everybody's talking about how to align the whole dynamic industry.'
Companies also must consider the trade-offs or unintended consequences of using some water-saving technologies. For example, Lui said that while laser reduces water and chemical usage, it increases the energy level.
Region plays a factor as well. Brazilian mill Vicunha's uses the water footprint method to measure, beginning with cotton and ending with the final fabric. The method categories water into three categories: blue (water from natural sources), green (rainwater), and gray (water needed to dilute chemicals). With this method, Luiz Eduardo Veloso, Vicunha's product development general manager, said the mill found that it requires 5,000 liters to make a jean, but 82 percent is green water.
'A lot of new technologies have come. New ones will come soon, and all these technologies [aim to reduce water consumption,' he said. An investment to recycle city wastewater to use as industrial water has had a large impact on Vicunha's production. 'The idea is to not use more water from the surface or underground—to keep this water for the human beings and the animals,' Veloso said, adding that the company's goal is to have plants that only use recycled water.
Chemical supplier BluConnection teamed with its mill and laundry partners to create a benchmark using the best available technology, which Alexander Bock, COO of BluConnection, said is always a moving benchmark.
'Our industry standard is 80-90 liters of water for a pair of jeans,' he said, adding that 20-40 liters comes from the denim production itself. However, with the best available technology, Bock said water usage can be reduced 10-12 liters in the laundry and 10-11 liters in the denim manufacturing. 'The biggest bulk of water usage is in cotton growing.'
The average amount of water used in fabric and finishing stage is 100 liters with finishing accounting for 70 percent, according to Carmen Silla, Jeanologia marketing director. However, the company's sustainable technologies such as laser, ozone and e-flow can reduce impact during the finishing stage to 45 liters per garment on average.
Jeanologia landed on this number through the first Environmental Impact Measuring (EIM) impact report, which analyzed over 200,000 finishing recipes. The company uses EIM, the measuring tool it created in 2009 for internal use and graduated to a commercial version in 2018, as a compass. Silla said EIM has become a way to speak a common language between fabric makers, brands and garment manufacturers, evolving into a standard.
Suppliers are also looking at ways to reduce wastewater. A new solution to eliminate wastewater is part of BluConnection's water strategy. The company has developed a new process that replaces hydrosulfite, a chemical that eventually becomes salt, with a natural and biodegradable alternative that can reduce salt in wastewater up to 60 percent.
Jeanologia's H2zero system treats water, leaving it in optimal conditions for reuse for up to 30 days in the washing finishing processes without the need of chemicals. The technology can also connect to existing water treatment plants.
While brands and retailers are concerned of the water and sustainability, in general, Silla said the reality burden of investments for water-focused technologies falls on suppliers like fabric mills, laundries and garment manufacturers.
'There are so many initiatives, but we need to join forces to get this alignment,' she said.
