The Life of a T-Shirt

FROM 4SEED TO STORE THE LIFE OF A T-SHIRT • Your average T-shirt has already traveled the world by the time it finds its way into your closet. From its humble beginning on a farm, that cotton will cross international borders 2-4 times before reaching you. Let's take a look inside the extraordinary journey of an ordinary T-shirt. TINY SEEDS, HUGE INDUSTRY Once the cotton is picked, it The cleaned cotton is pressed into bales to be shipped GPS-guided, self-driving cotton picker machines can harvest goes to high-speed gins that 100 acres of cotton per day. remove the seeds. overseas. THE N UMBE RS One cotton farm can produce 13,000 bales of cotton annually-enough to make 9.4 million T-shirts. = 1 million T-shirts Overall, U.S. cotton farmers produce about 15 billion bales of cotton, or 7-3 billion pounds, of cotton every year. That makes America the top cotton exporter in the world. TURNING COTTON INTO CLOTH SPINN ING The USDA tests samples of every cotton bale to rate the fibers based on color, fineness, staple length, and strength. These ratings ensure that factories are getting cotton that meets their specific requirements to produce yarn. Some of the countries around the world that produce the most T-shirts include: Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, and Turkey. KNITTING DYEING Circular knitting machines The fabric is washed and then either spin the yarn into seamless bleached or dyed to create a uniform color sheets of fabric. for garment manufacturing. FUN FACT: Runoff from the dyeing process stimulates the growth of algae ponds, which are then used as a biofuel source to power the factory. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER YCLOTHING bse. Garment manufacturers The pieces are then sewn In the final manufacturing use patterns to cut stacks together in an assembly step, the shirts are dyed of sleeves, bodies, and line to construct the with colors or printed with collars while minimizing actual T-shirts. designs to create the wasted fabric. finished product. VERY BIG BOATS The T-shirts now take the final international leg of the journey. Boxes of shirts are packed into giant shipping containers that are placed aboard cargo ships. One 40-foot shipping container can hold 82,880 T-shirts. 40FT.SHIPPING CONTAINER 82,880 T-SHIRTS A large cargo ship today can carry approximately 5,000 40-foot containers. = 1,000 containers That translates to 414,400,000 T-shirts-if a ship was only carrying shirts. The garment industry is a major part of the global economy. People all over the world contribute to the journey of a T-shirt, crafting a fabric that unites across borders. This remarkable international journey makes your T-shirt anything but ordinary. YCLOTHINGShORe http://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title http://www.nrdc.org/living/stuff/t-shirt-life-story.asp https://www.cotton.org/econ/world/ http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/living/tshirt-lifecycle/2012 http://cottonofthecarolinas.com/processes/dye.html