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07 March 2018 Photo Aden Ardenrich from Pexels
Is there a pollution solution
To make one cotton T-shirt up to 2 700 litres are used – that is two-and-a-half years of drinking water for one person.
Dr Cindé Greyling, a UFS DiMTEC (Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa) alumni, studied drought mitigation – with a strong focus on communicating important water-saving information. 

Coming out of the closet
“We often point to the mining, agriculture, and energy sectors as water pollution culprits, which they are, but what about closer to home?” Dr Greyling asks. It is good if you take short showers, harvest rainwater, and are conscious about closing taps, but, she explains, there is a big problem hiding in your closet. Textiles. “It is difficult to put an exact number or ranking to it, but the textile industry could easily be in the top 10 water polluters. The cotton plant requires a lot of water and is one of the most chemically dependent crops in the world. Long before manufacturing starts, water is already at stake.” Not that polyester, or polyester blends are much better – when washed, thousands of microplastic fibers are released that eventually end up in our water sources and the oceans.

To dye for
“Most dyes used for textiles are also heavy water pollutants,” she explains. “And since we’ve developed a taste for cheap, mass-produced clothing, the production sites take strain – putting the community and environment at risk. When you wash these cheaply made garments, the same toxic dye is often visibly released.” The fashion industry is regularly criticised by animal activists for their insidious labour practices. But maybe it is time to help limit their environmental impact too.  

One in, one out
“We must unlearn our fashion gluttony. There is no pride in having a wardrobe full of clothes that you do not wear. Buy less, buy better quality, and care for your clothes so that you don’t have to replace them that often. To make one cotton T-shirt, up to 2 700 liters is used – that is 2 ½ years of drinking water for one person. My household applies a ‘one-in-one-out’ rule. You can only buy, for example, a new pair of denim jeans, if you take an old pair out that you either donate or repurpose. It works very well – you think twice about purchasing.”

A helping hand
Dr Greyling thinks that beside individual efforts, the UFS community can contribute a lot toward reducing textile water pollution, such as opening a pre-used clothing bank on campus. “Students are very influential and can easily create a ‘cool to re-use’ fashion trend, even if just locally. Also, research students can further explore and develop textile alternatives like bamboo, hemp, or a more water-friendly synthetic.” 

News Archive

Inaugural lecture explores the compatibility of commercial certainty and constitutionalism
2015-10-15

From the left: Prof Caroline Nicholson,
Prof Elizabeth Snyman van Deventer,
Justice Malcolm Wallis and Dr Lis Lange.

Justice Malcolm Wallis presented his inaugural lecture, entitled “Compatibility of commercial certainty and constitutionalism”, to the Faculty of Law on 17 September, 2015. The occasion was attended by faculty staff, students, and senior members of the Bloemfontein judiciary.

In her welcoming remarks, Prof Caroline Nicholson, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the UFS,  expressed the immense pride the faculty has in hosting such an occasion, and the remarkable work of Justice Wallis in the South African legal fraternity over his forty-year career.

Justice Wallis spoke of the constitution’s important role in ensuring that the law in commercial matters is enforced fairly without the prejudice or undue influence from the desire to obtain or preserve personal advantage. “Try, if you can, to conceive of a society in which commercial relationships are enforced and enforceable purely as a matter of discretion. Ask yourselves:  how would such a society function?” he said.

He reiterated that the role and the rule of law is to guide and protect parties in commercial transactions. It has considerable impact on society in how it is enforced. “Commercial disputes may seem to involve only the parties to the proceedings, but when they involve significant changes to established commercial law, their impact is inevitably wider. Such changes affect other agreements, other relationships, underlying financing transactions, and, in our modern world, contracts of insurance and reinsurance. The latter at least will always have an international dimension,” he said.

He explored specific judgements and the role the concept of “Ubuntu” played in delivering them, the fair enforcement of commercial law, and how this should be an integral part of South African law under the constitution.

 In closing, Justice Wallis stated that “in principle, the existence of a constitution and constitutional rights need not destabilise commercial law, or the reasonable expectations of business people.”

Justice Wallis has received numerous accolades locally and internationally during his long career, including his appointment as a Professor Extraordinary in the Department of Mercantile Law at the University of the Free State in 2014.



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