Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

NEW: Levi’s uses 100% recycled water in jeans production process

Levi Strauss has developed an industry-first process for using 100% recycled water in part of the production of its jeans.

jeans 'Water recycling minimizes the depletion of this natural resource.'

The company has just made 100,000 pairs of Levi’s women’s jeans using the new process, saving around 12 million liters of water.

The move is a result of a third-party water recycling verification, designed to reduce the impact of garment production on fresh water resources in the regions of the world Levi’s operates production facilities.

It is currently being used in one Levi’s Chinese factories, which dyes, bleaches and stonewashes jeans to get different looks and feels.

The Chinese factory engineered a system that pipes 100% recycled water into an industrial laundry machine used for finishing jeans products.

According to Michael Kobori, Levi’s VP of sustainability who was speaking to the Guardian newspaper, the business looked at Environmental Protection Agency guidelines on the reuse of water, as well as World Health Organization guidelines on managing wastewater. It then adapted them into a set of standards that can be specifically used in the garment industry.

On its website, Levi’s said: “We don’t want to stop at one supplier making 100,000 units…we want to scale the recycled water program. A Nicaraguan supplier will implement it later this year, and we’re talking about it with other factories around the world.

“The goal is to expand it across all of our collections – and beyond. We’ll share the recycled water standard with key industry stakeholders for other suppliers to use.

“For [our] suppliers, our engineering expertise can save factory owners thousands of dollars in consulting fees, making it more affordable for them to install the necessary recycling systems. Water recycling also reduces water costs for the manufacturer and, most importantly, minimizes the depletion of this natural resource.”

Levi’s was one of the first clothing companies to raise awareness of water use in production back in 2011 with the launch of its Water