GOOD Design Daily: How Levi's Makes Jeans With (Much) Less Water

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuNofhQUV8I

Levi's has embarked upon quite the campaign to raise awareness about waste in the production and washing of jeans. Take the dyeing process alone: One pair of jeans requires a remarkable 42 liters of water just to turn that distressed shade of blue.

Last year, Levi's hosted a contest that asked for ideas from their audience about how they could handwash and dry their jeans to reduce their footprint. The year before that they added new tags which detail how to responsibly care for jeans, including directions like "Donate to Goodwill."

Now they're showing how they've made drastic changes in their own production chain to ensure that their facilities are using less water—an average of 28 percent less per pair, and up to 96 percent for some styles. This fun, quirky video shows how much water they're saving, and another video hosted on their site shows how they did it: By changing the way they design, sew, and dye their jeans (fun fact: they actually do wash jeans with rocks to get that stone-washed look). A page of resources hopefully inspires consumers to get serious about saving water, too.