The short answer is: everything. It takes about 700 gallons of water to produce one cotton t-shirt. That number comes from the European Parliament and it’s been confirmed so many times by so many organizations that it’s boring to cite at this point.
But it’s worth sitting with for a second. Seven hundred gallons. One shirt. That’s roughly enough drinking water to keep a person alive for two and a half years.
For a shirt you’ll probably own for what? Eight months?
The impact of waste
Americans generated 17 million tons of textile waste in 2018, according to the EPA. (That’s the most recent comprehensive data we have) Of that 17 million tons, 11.3 million went directly into landfills. About 15% got recycled. The rest was incinerated.
And it’s getting worse, not better. The Government Accountability Office published its first-ever report on textile waste in December 2024, and found that textile waste in the U.S. jumped more than 50% between 2000 and 2018. The GAO also found that no single federal agency is even responsible for coordinating a response. The EPA has said it plans to develop a national textile recycling strategy, though their timeline for that is five to ten years.
Five to ten years! For a plan. Not a solution. A plan.
Fast fashion is the obvious villain, but the math is what gets you
You’ve heard the fast fashion critique before. Shein, Zara, all of it. And yeah, the fashion industry accounts for somewhere around 8 to 10% of global carbon emissions. That’s more than all international flights and maritime shipping put together, which sounds made up but isn’t.
The average garment today gets worn seven to ten times before someone throws it away. Not seven to ten years. Seven to ten times. Fifteen years ago that number was significantly higher. We’ve basically created a system where clothes function like packaging.
So what does this have to do with a thrift store in Cleveland?
More than you’d think.
When you buy a jacket off the rack at Value World, the water’s already been used. The carbon’s already been emitted. The dye has already gone wherever dye goes (and you probably don’t want to know the answer to that one). You’re not adding demand for any of it. You’re just giving a garment more life than it was otherwise going to get.
And that turns out to matter a lot. Research from WRAP, a UK-based waste and resources organization, found that extending a garment’s active life by nine months cuts its carbon, water, and waste footprint by 20 to 30%. Nine months is nothing. That’s a fall and a winter.
Value World’s inventory comes through partnerships with nonprofit organizations and recycling programs, and it rotates constantly. New items show up on the racks all the time across their stores in Ohio, Michigan, and Texas.
Earth Day
Earth Day can feel performative. Companies post green graphics, everyone shares infographics for 48 hours, and then it’s back to business. Some of the advice is so vague it’s meaningless. “Be more mindful.” OK. Of what? In what way?
Buying secondhand is specific. It’s a real thing you can do this week that has a measurable environmental impact. Not a symbolic one. Not a “raising awareness” one. An actual one, where water doesn’t get consumed and carbon doesn’t get emitted and a perfectly good pair of jeans doesn’t get buried in a landfill in some county in the Southeast.
Is it going to fix the fashion industry? No. The GAO report made it pretty clear that nobody’s fixing anything at the federal level anytime soon. But 11.3 million tons of textiles in American landfills every year is not an accident. It’s a bunch of individual choices. And every time one of those choices goes differently, something that was going to become waste gets to be useful instead.