Facts for the Clothes-Minded

From fall 2018 The Page That Counts, one of my favorite features in Yes! magazine (by Miles Schneiderman):

Liters of water it takes to make one cotton shirt:
2,700 (about 675 gallons)

Greenhouse gases released in 2015 from the production of polyester for textiles:
706 billion kilograms

Percentage increase in number of garments purchased by the average global consumer, from 2000 to 2014:
60

Percentage decrease in time the average global consumer keeps a garment before throwing it away, from 2000 to 2014:
50

Tons of clothing Americans throw away each year:
14 million

Percentage of clothes in the U.S. that wound up in landfills or incinerators, as opposed to being recycled, in 2012:
84

That's some radical behavioral change in a short period of time, and all in the wrong direction (buying more clothes, discarding more clothes). It could be changed back, or better, just as easily.

Buy used clothes; sell or donate your used clothes. If they've reached the end of their useful life, reuse them somehow or donate to a rag-recycling program.

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Sources: World Wildlife Fund - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - McKinsey & Co. - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.