Levi's Is Thinking Green with Eco-Friendly Denim

By Jim.Robinson|January 13, 2011

As cotton consumers and competitors increasingly focus on the fiber’s ecological impact, Levi Strauss is taking steps to wring the waste out of the production process. An average pair of jeans use 42 liters of water in the finishing process, but Levi’s new Water<Less jeans reduces that amount by 28 percent–and some of the products in the new line reduce water usage by as much as 96 percent.

During the production process, jeans are “finished” in large washing machines and dryers to create a unique look and feel. Using traditional garment-washing methods, the average pair of jeans undergoes as many as 10 washing cycles, which adds approximately 42 liters of water per unit.

Levi’s Water <Less jeans have reduced the water consumption in the finishing process by making simple changes to the process, including:
• A reduction in the number of washing machine cycles by combining multiple wet cycle processes into a single wet process,
• The incorporation of ozone processing into the garment washing, and
• The removal of the water from the stone wash.

“What’s different about the Water<Less collection is that we’re still using the same materials and techniques to create finishes for our jeans, but we’ve substantially reduced water’s role in the equation,” said Carl Chiara, director of brand concepts and special projects for the Levi’s brand. “Sometimes, the way to achieve a more sustainable design is to rethink a traditional process and find a way to do it better.”

The first collection of Water<Less products will be available in January of 2011 and will include over a dozen classic Levi’s jeans and the Levi’s trucker jacket. Because the company will make more 1.5 million pairs of those jeans in the 2011 product line, water savings should total about 16 million liters.