Categorias: Todos - manufacturing - cotton - recycling - consumer

por Aly-Mohammed Bhaloo 9 meses atrás

58

The Lifecycle of a T-Shirt

The process of creating a t-shirt involves multiple stages starting from the cultivation of cotton plants. The cotton is harvested and separated from seeds using an industrial cotton gin.

The Lifecycle of a T-Shirt

The shirt gets disposed of either through a landfill, incinerator, other methods, or it's recycled

Consumer decides to throw out the shirt

At the consumer's home the shirts are constantly being worn, washed and dried.

The shirt gets bought

The costs of t-shirts are largely externalized

Once the t-shirts arrive on land, they are transported by trucks and maybe trains, eventually making their way to stores.

The boxes are put in large shipping containers and then brought to Canada by cargo ships.

Next, the clothes are stored into warehouses until ready to be shipped

The clothes are packaged into polybags and/or cardboard boxes

Deforestation occurs in China, America, and India

Creates farms

Warm temperatures, rich soil

The cotton is organized into 225 kg bales

These balls are put in an industrial cotton gin, which separates the seeds from the balls, creating pure cotton.

The fluffy balls created by the cotton plants are then harvested by tractors.
Cotton plants are grown.

Add text

The cotton bails are shipped to a spinning facility

The cotton is blended, carded, combed, pulled, stretched, and finally twisted by high-tech machines, which the convert the material into ropes of yarn called slivers.

The slivers are transported to mills
At the mills, the slivers are woven by large and circular knitting machines into sheets of rough, grey fabric

Heat and chemicals are used to turn the fabric more soft and white

The new fabric is dipped into bleach and then azo dyes (to give it colour)

They are then transported to factories usually in China, India, Bangladesh, or Turkey

Human labour is needed to stitch up the fabric into t-shirts

Summary

The Lifecycle of a T-Shirt