Saving Water

Cotton is a crop which requires a large amount of water, as well as many hours of sunlight and effective drainage. This means that it is generally grown in dry areas with low rainfall.

More than half the water used for cotton farming throughout the world is from irrigation.

revive saves some 2,700 litres of water per T-shirt!
According to the Institute for Water Education (Unesco-IHE), in order to produce a conventional cotton T-shirt, 2,720 litres of water are needed!

This water is used mainly in the cotton farming process.

What’s more, at revive we do not need to dye the clothes we make, which means even greater water savings.

Just take a look at your monthly water bill to see what 2,700 litres means in terms of household consumption!

Poisoned aquifers and surrounding lands

Cotton farming, as well as needing large amounts of water, also leads to the poisoning of aquifers and land near the farming area, due to the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

Why is recycled cotton more ecological than organic cotton?

For a start, recycled cotton does not have to be farmed.

We give left-overs from the textile industry a second chance, as these cut-off pieces would otherwise be thrown onto a tip or destroyed.

Even organic cotton has to be farmed, and although though pesticides are not used in the farming process, large amounts of water are used, even more than for growing conventional cotton.

The Aral, the lost sea

Since the mid-sixties, almost all the water from the rivers which feed this sea has been used solely for cotton farming. Today more than 80% of its surface area and almost all of its aquatic life has disappeared.

The sea has become a desert of salt and chemical dust as a result of the pesticides used over the decades.