Levi’s issues care tag for your jeans and the planet

Clothing is often a victim of a closet cleaning, moves, or style updates. Perfectly good pieces are pitched in the trash without a second thought. Levi’s and Goodwill have launched a tag-team mission to make sure your jeans have more than one life.

Levi Strauss’ new “Care Tag For Our Planet” program has a twofold mission to reduce the carbon footprint of their jeans. Each pair will have a tag that recommends that the owner reduce energy consumption by washing the jeans in cold water, air dry them when possible, and wash them less to reduce water consumption. The last label line suggests donating the pair to Goodwill to extend their lifecycle.

This is a great move considering clothing quickly piles up the numbers when it comes to landfills and energy use. Goodwill International estimates that about 23.8 billion pounds of clothing are tossed into US landfills each year. All of those trips to the laundromat, gallons of water, and run of the dryer also add up over time. A study by Levi Strauss found that each pair of jeans uses 400 megajoules of power over their lifetime and an shocking 3,000 liters of water. 

According to a press release, Levi’s and Goodwill plan to feature the tags in their retail stores as well as an online viral campaign. The tags will appear in the US in January and hit the global market in the fall of 2010.

Not only can people conserve energy with Levi’s labels but they can also donate to a great cause. Goodwill Industries has been a stalwart in troubled times providing job training and a myriad of career services for those in need. A trip to your local Goodwill store to drop off a pair of jeans is a lot less painful than a visit to the post office or DMV. Plus, they don’t hand out tax deductions.