Green Living Works!

Yesterday, we discussed the different cotton label meanings for 100 percent cotton, organic cotton, transitional cotton, and green cotton. We also learned that 100 percent cotton is very, very scary! Well, today you will learn even more of just how scary conventional cotton farming methods are for our earth. So, if you still aren’t sold on organic cotton, here’s more evidence in favor of it.

It still is a little shocking. After all, we’ve always held cotton up as some sort of pure and wonderful natural fiber. Cotton is a natural polymer, making it strong, durable, and absorbent. It was the polyesters and rayons and nylons that we looked down on, not cotton–cotton lets us breathe!

Conventional cotton cultivation is very punishing to the earth and its inhabitants. Here’s how:

• For one, it takes a whole lot of water to grow cotton. Conventional cotton farming uses so much water that it can actually cause desertification.
• Conventional cotton farming methods contaminates the drinking water for an estimated 14 million people in the United States with toxic chemicals.
• Despite using only three percent of farmland, cotton uses roughly 25 percent of worldwide insecticides and more than 10 percent of pesticides.
• Seven of the top 15 pesticides used by conventional cotton are carcinogens according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These seven pesticides are actually classified as Class I or Class II chemicals by the EPA, which are the most toxic of all chemicals.
• It takes about one-quarter of a pound of chemicals to produce one single cotton t-shirt.
• More than two billion pounds of synthetic fertilizers are used on conventional cotton annually in the United States.

You got the point. Enough of that negativity. Organic cotton farming is so much better:

• It manages water use much more responsibly, which helps sustain the farmland.
• It’s methods and materials have a lower impact on the earth and its inhabitants, directly and indirectly.
• It’s production methods restore and maintain soil fertility.
• It doesn’t use toxic and persistent chemical pesticides, insecticides, and processing chemicals.
• It doesn’t use genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and supports agricultural diversity.
• It doesn’t have a chemical residue from finishing materials.

So, just think about all of the clothes and things, like sheets, pillows, mattresses, cotton balls, ear swabs, etc. that you use on a daily basis that are made of conventional cotton. Scary? Yes. Switch to organic cotton, please!