I have been doing a lot of dyeing recently and that got me thinking about how much water I use to colour my cloth. Although I’m not on a water meter so don’t pay per litre I do try to ‘do my bit’ when I dye and print but I have never actually put a figure to my usage. Until today.

The majority of the fabric that I colour is either printed or dyed using low immersion techniques. When printing the amount of water consumed in soda soaking fabrics or in the thickened dyes themselves is low – probably less than 1/4 litre per square metre of fabric. And low immersion dyeing techniques use around 1 litre of water per square metre.  That sounds OK.

I recently installed a DIY screen washing trough in my garden so that I can clean screens using a garden hose. The nozzle on the end speeds up the process considerably compared with rinsing in a sink but it still takes a minute or so per screen which equates to around 5 litres of water. I often use two screens per square metre of fabric so that becomes 10 litres. Not so good.

And then there is rinsing. I typically wait until I have a bunch of fabric that needs rinsing and washing as I know this is a water hungry process. I rinse in buckets rather than an open sink to use less water and rinse 2 metres of fabric per bucket. I typically use 6 buckets of water in my rinsing process with each bucket containing about 6 litres of water. Doing the maths that is 18 litres per square metres. Nope, not good.

I put about 6 metres of fabric together in the washing machine and use a quick wash cycle at 30C followed by a long cycle at 60C. My washing machine booklet tells me that this uses 134 litres. So over 22 litres per square metre of fabric. Not good at all.

I am using over 50 litres of water to print a square metre of fabric and over 40 litres of water to dye it. Which sounds awful! 

But put in perspective?

A quick google search suggests that it can take up to 20,000 litres of water to make 1kg of cotton fabric which equates to 2800 litres of water per square metre of the cotton poplin I use in my studio. Should we stop using cotton? Man made fabrics aren’t particularly environmentally friendly either so no. Should we buy less clothes and wear the ones we have a lot more – well yes! Should I stop printing my own and buying commercially dyed and printed cotton – definitely not. Commercial dyeing and printing uses far more water than I do. And it doesn’t produce unique pieces of art.

I should, however, figure out how to collect rain water for rinsing screens.