Forget whether they’re skinny or boyfriend — ask yourself is your denim eco-friendly, says Harriet Walker
Skinny, straight, boyfriend or flares — the most pressing issue when buying jeans used to be the cut, but these days yours must come with a conscience too. Worry not, in this post-trends age, about whether your denim is this season’s shape, but about what shape it will leave the planet in.
According to Greenpeace, more than 1.7 million tonnes of chemicals go into making 2 billion pairs of jeans every year. That includes 16 per cent of the world’s pesticides on the cotton harvest, a cocktail of cancer-causing heavy metals used to artfully distress, as well as mercury, lead and copper from a dyeing process estimated to have already polluted 70 per cent of Asia’s rivers. Jeans are a thirsty cash crop: each pair
thetimes.co.uk