From Fibre to Landfill

Stage 1–2: Field and gin

Most cotton t-shirts start in a field — usually in the United States, India, China, Brazil, or Pakistan, the 5 biggest cotton producers. Cotton plants are grown for about 6 months before the white fluffy bolls are picked, mostly by machine in the US, often by hand in India.

The raw cotton then goes to a 'gin' (short for 'engine') — a machine that separates the fluffy lint from seeds and stems. The lint is bundled into bales weighing about 225 kg each. From here, the cotton might travel halfway around the world to be turned into yarn.

A single t-shirt's worth of cotton may already have logged a thousand miles before it's even fibre.

Stage 3–4: Spinning and weaving

Bales of cotton lint head to a spinning mill, often in China, India, Vietnam, or Turkey. There, machines twist the fibres into long threads called yarn. Cotton yarn for a t-shirt is usually 'combed' — a process that aligns the fibres for a smoother feel.

The yarn then goes to a knitting or weaving mill (sometimes the same factory, sometimes another country) where it becomes fabric. T-shirts use knit fabric — a stretchy interlocking pattern. Dress shirts use woven fabric — a stiffer over-under pattern.

At this stage, your shirt is just a roll of plain off-white fabric. It's already crossed 1–3 borders.

Stage 5–6: Dyeing and cutting

Now the fabric needs colour. Dyeing happens in massive factories — China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam — where rolls of fabric are dipped or sprayed with chemical dyes and then washed and dried.

Dyeing is one of the dirtiest steps in fashion. The textile industry is the second-largest polluter of clean water globally. Rivers downstream of dyeing districts often run blue, red, or black. Some dyes contain heavy metals like chromium and cadmium. OEKO-TEX certification (covered in the Brands course) is one way to verify dyes are safer.

Dyed fabric then goes to a cut-and-sew factory, often in Bangladesh, Cambodia, or Vietnam. There, workers cut the fabric using paper patterns and stitch the pieces into shirts. A single shirt might be touched by 10 different workers in 30 minutes.

Stage 7–8: Shipping and after

The finished shirts are folded, bagged in plastic, packed into cardboard boxes, and loaded into shipping containers. They cross oceans on container ships — usually from Asia to Europe or North America. A container ship can carry tens of thousands of shirts at once.

From the port, shirts go to warehouses, then to stores or directly to customers. By the time you wear it, your t-shirt has likely travelled 20,000+ miles.

And then? You wear it 7 to 10 times on average (the global figure for fast fashion). When you're done, it most often goes to: - A landfill (about 73%) - A donation bin that ships it to Ghana or Chile (about 12%) - An incinerator (about 12%) - Actually recycled into new fabric (less than 1%)

That's the real lifecycle. From field to landfill in 18 months.