The “criticism” of the cotton sector for its, er, “excessive” water consumption has time and again been debunked as being without basis and without evidence. Worse, this argument has been flagrantly perpetuated by AI companies.

https://texfash.com/special/cotton-s-water-myth-busted-new-g...

Kranthi’s findings, published in the latest edition of the ICAC Recorder, argue that public perception of cotton's water use has been shaped by flawed metrics that fail to distinguish between water sources. Natural rainfall, which accounts for 75% of cotton's total water footprint, is an uncontrollable environmental factor that crops naturally utilise as part of their growth cycle.

The founder of Soylent came to the conclusion that having polyester shirts bulk-purchased directly from China, and donating them instead of washing them, was the ecologically sensible thing to do:

Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my used garments.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161104001753/http://robrhineha...

Discussion at the time (2011): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9996038

This also may be satire.

Typical shit

Cotton: About ~1500 litres if you exclude rain.

Polyester~30 litres (inclusive entire extraction chain).

Another way to put it:

Cotton: 750 almonds

Polyester: 15 almonds

5-250 California almonds

And people complain about AI water usage