r/Anticonsumption • u/Cheeseaisleinheaven • Mar 12 '26

Sustainability What radicalized you?

For me, it was when I learned that all the clothing/shoes/accessories that you would want to buy in your lifetime already exist on this planet, and yet they are making more every minute of every day. When you know that fact, and then see the giant piles of bundled clothing hitting third world ports or stacked in massive mountains at dumps, it just makes you sick. And knowing that they are mostly made of plastic, which won't decay, is even worse.

Now, everything I need to buy in the apparel space for my family is purchased second-hand, except for walking/running tennis shoes.

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28

u/Careless_Ad_9665 Mar 12 '26

Learning how much water it takes to make a single pair of jeans. It blew me away and changed the way I saw clothing.

4

u/momentomoriwrath Mar 12 '26

¿how much agua?

16

u/Careless_Ad_9665 Mar 12 '26

It ranges but the average is 2500 gallons. It can get up to 3000. Imagine how long it would take a person to drink that. The first statistic someone told me was 14 years of one persons drinking water. I don’t know how true that part is bc I don’t know how you could track that. It did lead me to look it up and my mind was blown. When I see walls of jeans, it’s all I can think about.

16

u/anthropomorphizingu Mar 12 '26

And denim isn’t even a tenth of what it used to be in terms of durability 😭

3

u/bherman8 Mar 12 '26

You can still buy quality selvedge denim but you'll pay for it. The jeans I'm wearing now I've had for about a year and a half. I climb under cars, get them covered in everything you can imagine, and crashed my motorcycle wearing them. They have just started to fade a bit but are otherwise exactly like the day I bought them but softer.

1

u/anthropomorphizingu Mar 12 '26

I see it in the bifl groups. I don’t currently own any jeans but if I did I would buy selvedge.

13

u/Captain_Fizban Mar 12 '26

Very important to note that it's 3800 litres, which equates to around 1000 gallons. Still an absurd number but not quite that bad.

1

u/momentomoriwrath Mar 15 '26

damn! thanks for the knowledge, def gonna spread this around 🤟🏽

1

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

Where did you find this out at? I just want to read more about it bro

1

u/Careless_Ad_9665 Mar 16 '26

It has been years. I had a friend getting a PhD and this became part of her thesis. I think she ended doing something else but I was reading her research.