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Levi's CEO settles the debate on just how often you should wash your jeans

There are a lot of diverse opinions on the topic.

via Levi Strauss and Ricardo Gomez Angel/Unsplash

How often should you wash your jeans?

Social media has become a fertile breeding ground for conversations about hygiene. Whether it’s celebrities bragging about how little their family bathes or battles over how often people should wash their sheets or bras.

One of the debates that gets the most diverse responses is how often people wash their denim jeans.

Denim atelier Benjamin Talley Smith tells Today that jeans should be washed "as little as possible, if at all.” Laundry expert Patric Richardson adds they should be cleaned “after nine or 10 wearings, like to me, that is the ideal." At that point, they probably have stains and are "a little sweaty by that point, so you need to wash 'em," Richardson says.

Still, some people wash and dry them after every wear while others will hand wash and never hang dry. With all these significant differences of opinion, there must be a correct answer somewhere, right?

The CEO of Levi Strauss, Charles Bergh, has stepped up to set the record straight on when and how to wash your jeans. He caused a stir in 2014 when he said he only washes his jeans once a year, but it was for environmental reasons more than hygiene.

He later clarified his thoughts in a blog post, “The Dirty Jean Manifesto” he posted to LinkedIn.

“I made this provocative statement because I believe strongly in what our brands stand for: quality, durability and lasting products made sustainably. I also said it because I believe we don’t need to wash jeans as often as most people think we do,” Bergh wrote.

"We learned that an average pair of jeans consumes roughly 3,500 liters of water — and that is after only two years of use, washing the jeans once a week," Bergh wrote. "Nearly half of the total water consumption, or 1,600 liters, is the consumer throwing the jeans in the washing machine. That’s equivalent to 6,700 glasses of drinking water!"

To add to the problem, denim jeans are often manufactured in places where water is scarce, such as India, Pakistan, Mexico, China and parts of California.

Bergh recently spoke with CNBC’s Christine Tan and clarified his thoughts on jean cleanliness.

“True denim heads, people that really love their denim, will tell you to never put your denim into a washing machine. So that’s what I do,” Bergh explained. “If I drop some curry on my jeans, I’m gonna clean it. But I’ll spot-clean it. And if they get really gross you know, if I’ve been out sweating or something and they get really gross, I’ll wash them in the shower.”

However, when Bergh washes his jeans in the shower, he does it while wearing them and washing them with soap. The image that the scene conjures is of a cowboy bathing in a cartoon, clothes on and all.

There are a lot of different opinions on how often one should wash and dry their jeans and many of them boil down to personal preference. But the debate on the topic has brought up one very big point we should all consider: when choosing how often we wash our jeans, a big part of the decision should be considering the amount of water we use.


This article originally appeared on 10.12.23

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Culture

Canada Goose is launching a new parka line created by Inuit designers

CanadaGoose/Instagram

The Inuit people have been living in the frozen tundra of northern Canada for thousands of years, so they clearly are the experts on creating warm outdoor wear. Canada Goose, a company that makes highly-rated outerwear, knows something about marketing warm jackets to people in cold climates.

What if you combined the best of both worlds to create a whole new kind of coat?

Project Atigi has set out to do just that. Established in 2019, Project Atigi is a social entrepreneurship program that "celebrates the expertise and the rich heritage of craftsmanship that has enabled Inuit to live in some of the most formidable climates and conditions," according to a press release.

This year's collection features 90 bespoke pieces, created by 18 Inuit designers. Each designer created a collection of five jackets "which reflect their heritage, communities, and artisanship."

"Project Atigi is a great example of cultural appreciation, not appropriation," said Mishael Gordon, an Inuit designer from Iqaluit, Nunavut who participated in the project's launch. "It's bringing together a world-renowned company and Inuit culture that is represented through our clothing and traditions. This is an opportunity for a piece of our heritage to reach a global audience, especially while owning our own designs."

RELATED: What is modern living like for people in the Arctic Circle? These native artists will show you.

"The talent that Inuit designers possess extends across Inuit Nunangat and the art of making parkas has been part of our culture for thousands of years," Natan Obed, President of ITK, said in a statement.. "By partnering with Canada Goose and expanding this initiative, it raises awareness of the incredible talent of our designers and allows us to share more of our culture and craftsmanship to the world in a way that protects and respects Inuit intellectual property and designs."

Proceeds from each Project Atigi parka sale will go back to Inuit communities across Canada via ITK.

"Project Atigi was born in the North, created by the North and for the North," said Dani Reiss, President & CEO, Canada Goose. "We're leveraging our global platform to share Inuit craftsmanship with the world and to create social entrepreneurship opportunities in the communities that inspire us. When you purchase a Project Atigi parka, you're making an investment in the place and people that shape them."

Beautiful. If you want to try out one of these extra-warm coats made with Inuit creativity and ingenuity, they will be available on canadagoose.com starting January 23.

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Family

A mom couldn't stand her teenage son teasing poor kids so she came up with the perfect punishment

Facebook / Cierra Brittany Forney

Children in middle school can be super shallow when it comes to fashion. To be part of the in-crowd, you have to wear the right shoes and brand-name clothing, and listen to the right music.

The sad thing is that kids that age can be so creative, but they're forced into conformity by their peers.

Some people never escape this developmental phase and spend their entire lives wasting their money on material goods and judging those who do not or can not.

Cierra Brittany Forney, a mother from Braselton, Georgia, couldn't stand the fact that her kid was acting entitled and making fun of kids who don't wear name-brand clothing, so she gave him an attitude adjustment he'll never forget.

So lately, my 13 year old son had been acting a little... entitled. Acting like he's too good to shop at Wal-Mart or making snarky comments about kids at school who shop at the goodwill and quite a few other things. I don't tolerate that. Today, he took his own 20.00 to the goodwill to buy clothes to wear the entire week to school. Whatever he found is what he would have to wear. He isn't happy and shed a few tears but I firmly believe in 15 years he will look back and laugh at the day his Mom made him shop at goodwill. I want to teach my kids that money isn't everything and if you have to degrade other people because of where they shop, then you too will shop there. Side note, I love the goodwill!!

RELATED: Feminist blogger has tough advice for mothers with lazy husbands: 'Divorce his ass'

via Marc Moss / Flickr

Forney's punishment was perfect because it made her son realize what other kids whose parents can't afford the name-brand clothes have to go through. Hopefully, it made him realize that people are so much more than what they wear and where they shop.

RELATED: Mother posts raw photos of her C-section scar to prove it's not the 'easy way out'

"I did this to teach him that money and name brands don't change who we are as people," Forney wrote in a subsequent post. "He can still be the amazing, adorable, loved kid that he is WITHOUT the expensive stores!"

She also said that she might be partly responsible for his attitude.

"I do realize that we are partly to blame for his expectancy of always having name brands," she wrote. "My husband and myself had our son when we were VERY young. We always strived to give him all the things we never had and because of that, he has grown to expect these things."

But the important thing is that her son learned an important lesson about materialism. One that that far too many adults never do

"All that matters is my son is completely 100 percent okay with what happened," Forney wrote. "My son has learned a valuable lesson from this AND my son is rockin' his button up shirt he bought from the Goodwill with PRIDE today!!!"

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Heroes

This artist is using tons of plastic garbage to make an urgent point about waste.

Over the past several years, artist Benjamin Von Wong has been on an amazing journey inspiring people to reconsider what they throw away.

It started with a trip to Guatemala and an up-close photoshoot of a massive trash heap there, and quickly morphed into a series of projects designed to confront people with various aspects of the world's waste problem.

As an artist, however, he wanted to do it in a way that would get people to look first before he unloaded harrowing facts about waste on them. There's so much alarmist news out there about what we're doing to our planet that, frankly, after a while, many of us end up turning off to the problem. Von Wong's method of turning trash into something beautiful to get our attention is a different, perhaps more productive approach.

"As human beings, we go through so much sh*t," noted the artist in a blog post on Bored Panda. "Every day, we make dozens of small decisions to buy more stuff – at the supermarket, malls, online… For most of my life, I didn’t think it mattered. After all, I was just one person, making a couple of small decisions."

"But one day, I found myself in a landfill surrounded by an endless mountain of other people’s small decisions and realized that maybe those small decisions did matter."

So, with a veritable army of like-minded volunteers, he created a series of waste-based art installations to help wake others up and see the problem that's all around them.

He put a mermaid in a plastic sea of 10,000 bottles — the same amount the average person uses and throws away in a lifetime.

He created "Toxic Laundry Monsters" to bring the chemicals and micro-plastics that are released every time we do a wash to life.

His latest piece, "Strawpocalypse" is meant to showcase the enormity of the plastic straw problem. It took him and his crew 6 months to collect 168,000 straws recovered off the streets of Vietnam to complete the waves.

In partnership with Laura François and her nonprofit, clothingtheloop.org, Von Wong took thousands of garments that were left in an abandoned factory in Cambodia and made several installations to accent how wasteful the fashion industry has become. You can check out how they made them here.

[rebelmouse-image 19480428 dam="1" original_size="700x316" caption="Photo via VonWong/YouTube." expand=1]Photo via VonWong/YouTube.

[rebelmouse-image 19480429 dam="1" original_size="700x353" caption="Photo via VonWong/YouTube." expand=1]Photo via VonWong/YouTube.

And this plastic cave was made from 18,000 cups that were collected from a food court in just one and a half days. It really puts that "by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean" statistic into perspective.

The point of all of this, Von Wong hopes, is that more people will start to change their consumption and waste habits. If nothing else, his art shows that one person can make a difference. A big difference.

We're up against a mounting problem, and that can feel overwhelming, but if you pick one thing today — whether it's plastic straws, bags, bottles or how you buy clothes — and make a decision to be more mindful about it, you'll be taking a significant step in the right direction.

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