The man at the top of iconic denim maker Levi Strauss has shared a bizarre proposal to help save the planet.
Climate-conscious Charles Bergh encouraged customers to wear their jeans in the shower instead of putting them in a washing machine – to save energy and water and reduce pollution.
He first raised eyebrows on the subject with public comments in 2014 that his own denim has ‘never seen a washing machine’ — and his advice that “real denim lovers” should follow suit.
Levi’s CEO Charles Bergh told CNBC’s ‘Managing Asia’ last month that he wears his jeans in the shower and scrubs them with soap like you would your own legs. But only ‘if they get really rough, you know, if I’ve been sweating or something’, the CEO explained
Scientists in Canada have found alarming levels of denim microfibers in aquatic ecosystems. Above, the distribution of average microfiber concentrations from the sediment samples they analyzed, including fibers found in the Canadian Arctic, the Great Lakes and rainbow trout.
Bergh has now clarified his position, but environmental science has also caught up with the idea, confirming that toxic microfibers stripped from denim during too many washing machine runs are building up in aquatic ecosystems.
“If they get really rough, you know, if I’m sweaty or something,” the CEO explained, “I’ll wash them in the shower.”
As Bergh told CNBC‘Managing Asia’ last month, he wears his jeans in the shower and scrubs them with soap like a person might wash their own legs. But only when his jeans get really dirty.
“If I spill some curry on my jeans, I’m going to clean them,” Bergh said. “But I’ll get clean.”
In 2020, researchers found that synthetic indigo denim fibers accounted for nearly a quarter of microfibers deposited in the Great Lakes and around the Canada-US border, and a fifth of clothing in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
The team’s experiments, published in Environmental Science and Technology Lettersalso determined that approximately 50,000 microscopic denim fragments are shed in a single run through a household washing machine.
“Blue jeans, the world’s most popular single garment,” the researchers said, “have a widespread geographic footprint in the form of microfibers in aquatic environments from temperate to Arctic regions.”
‘In fact, these ‘natural’ microfibers are often more abundant than synthetic microfibers in environmental samples.’
Images of an indigo denim fiber identified as cotton found in (C) Arctic sediments, (D) Great Lakes fish, (E) wastewater treatment plant effluent, and (F) a denim fiber released from blue jeans that was collected from rinse water effluent. Scale bars are 10 micrometers
The researchers, working from the University of Toronto, used microscopy and Raman spectroscopy to identify and count indigo denim microfibers in several water samples collected in Canada.
Raman spectroscopy scatters light from a high-intensity laser source to reveal information about chemical structure.
But the team also detected denim microfiber in the digestive tract of a rainbow smelt, a type of fish native to the Great Lakes.
Based on the levels of microfibers found in wastewater effluent, such as the kind swept away after a home laundry, the researchers estimate that local wastewater treatment plants emit about 1 billion indigo denim microfibers per day.
“We don’t yet know the impact on wildlife and the environment.” says the study’s lead author, Samantha Athey Explore Science News.
“Even though denim is made from a natural material – cotton – it contains chemicals,” she added.
But Levi’s CEO Charles Bergh had more environmentally conscious reasons for leaving your jeans out of the washing machine.
The household appliance uses a lot of water for each cycle.
Plus, washing your jeans is a big part of the clothes’ carbon footprint, according to Bergh. And the denim industry already consumes a lot of water on the manufacturing side, he told CNBC.
But as a dedicated denim lover who has made the fabric his career, the CEO had plenty of style-conscious reasons to keep his jeans out of the washing machine, too.
Too many spinning cycles, he suggested, would degrade the shape and color of jeans and reduce the risk of rips and holes.
“True denim heads, people who really love their denim,” Bergh said, “will tell you never to put your denim in a washing machine.”