Levi's CEO Says You're Washing Your Jeans Too Frequently

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Chip Bergh can easily go a year without washing a pair of jeans. Last year, the Levi's CEO told the crowd at Fortune's Brainstorm Green Conference that a pair of jeans goes through thousands of liters of water in its lifecycle, and half of that happens while you're doing laundry. At the time, Bergh told the crowd that the jeans he was wearing, which he had owned for nearly a year, had never been washed.

Today, Bergh revisited that point in Fortune, writing, "The latest study [shows] that, on average, a single pair of 501 jeans consumes nearly 3,800 liters of water and produces 33 kg of carbon emissions throughout its lifetime." According to a life-cycle assessment study conducted by Industrial Ecology Consultants and Levi Strauss &Co, the average American washes his jeans after two wears. Bergh says that reducing wash frequency to every 10 wears, would yield an 80% decrease in energy and climate change.

Now that you know the best places to shop for jeans in San Francisco, consider washing your jeans less. Because we're running out of water in the state, and that's hella scary.