Denim is famously thirsty. Ours now uses roughly a tenth of the water it did two years ago.
Traditional fading and distressing relies on repeated washing, pumice stones and chemical rinses. Each step uses a large volume of fresh water, and most of it leaves the process dirty.
Three changes did most of the work
- Laser finishing. The wear patterns on our denim are burned in by laser, which replaces several wash cycles entirely.
- A closed-loop rinse. Water is filtered and recirculated in the same facility rather than discharged after one pass.
- Fewer recipes. We standardised the finishing recipes for every style, which removed the over-washing that came from trial and error.
The water we do use is tested on site, and the results are published in our annual impact report.
