Levi strauss encourages water sustainability
From the cotton field in rural India to the local rag bin, a typical pair of blue jeans consumes 919 gallons of water during its life cycle, Levi Strauss & Company says, or enough to fill about 15 spa-size bathtubs. That includes the water that goes into irrigating the cotton crop, stitching the jeans together and washing them scores of times at home. The company wants to reduce that number any way it can, and not just to project environmental responsibility. It fears that water shortages caused by climate change may jeopardise the company’s very existence in the coming decades by making cotton too expensive or scarce.
So, to protect its bottom line, Levi Strauss has helped underwrite and champion a non-profit programme that teaches farmers in India, Pakistan, Brazil and West and Central Africa the latest irrigation and rainwater-capture techniques. It has introduced a brand featuring stone-washed denim smoothed with rocks but no water. It is sewing tags into all its jeans, urging customers to wash less and use only cold water.
On a recent morning at Levi Strauss headquarters in San Francisco, company executives were trying to figure how best to capitalise on their water conservation efforts. After being briefed on the cotton initiative by the sustainability team, the new chief marketing officer, Rebecca Van Dyck nodded her approval, then asked, “But do our customers know?”
Internal company research tells them Levi Strauss consumers like to see themselves as changing the world, Van Dyck said. The company does not disclose sales figures for individual products, but it said Levi Strauss jeans that were marketed this year were less water-intensive and sold faster than regular Levi’s that were similarly priced.
The company would start to publicise its commitment to better cotton in videos on its web site and at sustainability conferences. There was more awareness on online jeans forums. Edmund X White, a Brooklyn photographer, even chronicled his efforts to avoid washing his jeans. Two months into his experiment, on his honeymoon in Jamaica, he wrote, he dived into the ocean with a pair on. Later, White boasted, 11 months passed without a wash.
This news item is an excerpt from the below source: Source: http://business-standard.com/india/news/stone-washed-blue-jeans-minuswashed/454496/
©2011 The New York
Times News Service
