Nearly half of the fabric used to make a standard cotton T-shirt is discarded before the garment even reaches a store.
That is the conclusion of a new study by researchers from SINTEF and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
The researchers developed a model showing that a single 110-gram T-shirt requires 197 grams of cotton. Of that amount, 44% is lost during production—through spinning, dyeing, cutting, and sewing.
The researchers mapped the T-shirt’s life cycle across multiple stages, including cotton cultivation, yarn and fabric production, garment manufacturing, sorting, and recycling.
In the model, cotton was grown and processed in Bangladesh, post-consumer sorting was assumed to take place in Lithuania, and mechanical recycling was carried out in India.
The results showed that only 33 grams of the original 197 grams of cotton could be recovered—about 17% of the material. The rest was lost throughout the supply chain.
In other words, the textile waste problem begins long before consumers purchase a garment; it starts during production itself.
The study also found that increasing clothing collection rates after use from 40% to 90% would have only a limited impact, reducing emissions by just 2%. By contrast, cutting factory losses to the level achieved by the best-performing manufacturers could reduce cotton demand by nearly a quarter and lower CO₂ emissions by 10%.
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