BEST PRACTICES: Organic Cotton Textiles
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For every nine ounces of cotton—the amount in an average T-shirt—growers use an average of 17 teaspoons of chemical fertilizers and nearly a teaspoon of active ingredients, including pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and defoliants [courtesy of NWF.org]
At the end of last week, we focused on simple, immediate changes you can make at home to reduce your exposure to toxins. Those changes didn’t require the purchase or acquisition of big ticket items or fuel market demand for new products. While we’re necessarily in the business of consumerism as designers, we advocate first for reuse and repurposing whenever we can. We make every effort to recommend new products judiciously and responsibly only when necessary.
This week, we're talking about midscale changes--those that require some investment, but not a radical rethinking of building systems or personal/family priorities--that can make a big difference in your exposure to toxins at home and your ecological impact beyond. Though our professional work keeps us predominantly in the realm of talking about building materials and products, we do a lot of thinking on the personal front about those items that we come into intimate contact with everyday, and their potential impact on our families and our world.
We wear textiles all day and sleep on them all night, which means that we’re in close physical contact with some sort of fabric almost twenty-four hours per day. It also means that the demand for these items is high, especially given rising disposable income, urbanization and population growth in both established markets like the US and emerging markets like India and Mexico. One study projects that the global textile market will reach approximately $1,237 Billion USD by 2025.
Given the scale of that market, it makes sense to us to be informed about the best choices for both our families and our planet when it comes to purchasing textiles. The US Cotton industry launched an ongoing successful ad campaign in the early 1990s, complete with a ballad performed by Aaron Neville (and subsequently Miranda Lambert and others), that made “the fabric of our lives” feel like the only natural, wholesome choice for our homes. But the truth is that cotton cultivation requires more pesticides, fertilizers and defoliants than almost any other crop. According to National Wildlife Federation research,
For every nine ounces of cotton—the amount in an average T-shirt—growers use an average of 17 teaspoons of chemical fertilizers and nearly a teaspoon of active ingredients, including pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and defoliants.
NWF reports that the EPA categorizes 7 of the 15 most commonly-used cotton industry pesticides as “possible,” “likely,” “probable,” or “known” human carcinogens. And unfortunately those toxins persist in our environment, in the textiles themselves, and ultimately in our own bodies. Chemicals sprayed on cotton crops often kill birds in surrounding areas (some biologists estimate the casualties to number in the millions), and runoff from cotton fields inevitably finds its way into our watersheds where it kills fish (up to 240,000 in one 1995 Alabama event), and enter our own water supply.
It’s also true that only about 35% of harvested cotton is processed into cloth. The remaining two thirds often find their way into our diet. The seed, which is ground to produce cottonseed oil, is used in packaged products as diverse as baked goods, chips and snacks, salad dressings and marinades. Cotton meal (crushed seeds and hulls) are often fed to dairy and beef cattle, and gin trash (leaves, stems, etc) are also sometimes fed to livestock where the high pesticide levels they harbor get passed on in our food chain.
What can we do to avoid or mitigate these risks? The organic cotton market--which cultivates cotton without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, defoliants and fertilizers--is a rapidly emerging market. When you can, support its growth by purchasing Global Organic Textile Standard-certified cotton products (bedsheets, towels, apparel, drapery and upholstery, etc). The GOTS certification provides a clear set of environmental and social standards to “define world-wide recognized requirements that ensure organic status of textiles, from harvesting of the raw materials, through environmentally and socially responsible manufacturing up to labelling in order to provide a credible assurance to the end consumer.” Note that current GOTS standards maintain that products comprising at least 70% organic fibers are eligible for the certification, so read labels carefully if you’re looking to eliminate all agricultural chemicals from cotton at home.
Buying GOTS-certified textiles and supporting the growing movement towards a preference for organic cotton products means that you’re affecting change on a number of scales, protecting your family from potentially harmful chemicals locally, and advocating for healthier, more sustainable agricultural practices worldwide. We like Target’s line of organic cotton towels and sheets by Threshold (the most affordable option we’ve found), as well as the more luxurious options available at West Elm, Pottery Barn, and Coyuchi.