ORGANIC cotton

CLIMATE IMPACT

The fashion industry is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.

WATER USE

The fashion industry is the second-biggest consumer of water in the world.

To produce just one tee, it is estimated that it consumes 2,700 litres of water.

Enough drinking water for one person for 2.5 years

20% of the worlds waste water production

CHEMICALS

Conventional Cotton alone is responsible for 16% of all insecticides sold worldwide.

Hazardous synthetic pesticides used in non-organic farming can damage ecosystems, poison waterways and endanger workers.

HUMANITERIAN

The production of cotton is synonymous with slavery, an abhorrent association that is unfortunately not confined to the history books.

Currently, 20% of the worlds cotton is from China, 84% of this is grown in forced labour camps in the Xinjiang region.

combat climate change

By working with nature, farmers build healthy soils which act as a carbon sink, helping in someway to offset amount of emissions produced by the fashion industry.

healthy water systems

Healthier soils produced by organic farming methods prevent topsoil from drying out and being deposited by wind and rain into the surrounding waterways.

Better water retention from good quality soil limits the devastating effect of flooding during periods of heavy rain.

helps feed farmers

Planting crops alongside cotton can provide farming families and their communities with a more stable, accessible, abundant and diverse food supply and another source of income. Learn more about the connection between organic cotton farming and food security.

Given that the developing countries, in which 99% of organic cotton farmers live, are also home to 98% of the world’s hungriest people, it is clear that improved methods of cotton production can be a vital way of increasing access to food, not just for farmers, but for whole communities.67

natural methods

The banning of genetically modified seeds in organic farming means the farmers are not indebted to the companies producing the expensive and ineffectual modified variants.

This article from 2017 explains in more depth the horrors of GM crops