Why Buy Organic Clothing? - Cashmere, Wool and Silk directory

Non-organic cotton and polyester make up approximately 80% of all fiber production globally. Approximately 10,000-17,000 L of water is required to produce 1 Kg of cotton lint. This heavy water requirement has led to water shortages in many areas of the world such as the Aral Sea.

Over 73% of cotton fields world wide are irrigated (Kooistra and Termorshuizen, 2006). Improper irrigation techniques such as flood-furrow lead to salinisation. Salinisation is a condition which occurs through evaporation. Water contains minerals such as salt. If water is not allowed to penetrate the soil, that water evaporates, leaving behind the mineral salts. If this happens repeatedly, minerals will build up in the soil top layer. This salt build up will make the soil inhospitable to continued agriculture activity. An estimated 100 million hectares has been abandoned by farmers due to salinisation and cotton is the main crop involved in this arable land loss.

Conventional cotton consumes 11% of the world's pesticides and 24% of the world's insecticides, despite the fact that cotton only uses 2.4% of total arable land. Additionally pesticide and insecticide use is difficult to control due to its broad blanket application.

Because land application of pesticides and insecticides is difficult to control serious collateral damage to environment is common. For example, it is estimated that pesticides unintentionally kill approximately 67 million birds each year (Lotus, 2004).

Pesticides are highly persistent and as such, will stay around in ground water for a long time. This can lead to pesticides entering our drinking water and slowly poisoning us. For example, Tariq (2003) reported wide spread pesticide contamination of groundwater due to cotton cultivation in Pakistan and India. Pesticide contamination isn't just a third world problem. On Prince Edward Island, Canada, 110 domestic wells have been monitored since 2004 for pesticides. Pesticides were detected in 7.5% of domestic wells in 2004 and has steadily increased to over 15% in 2007 (Government of PEI, 2008).

Low level exposure to pesticides in drinking water won't likely have immediate effects on our health but in the long term, a variety of health effects are possible. There are convincing connections between pesticides and an increased risk of developing a variety of solid tumors such as brain cancer, kidney cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and other cancers such as non-Hodgkins lymphoma, leukemia as well as reproductive effects including: birth defects, fecundity, fetal death, and intrauterine growth retardation (Sanborn et al, 2004).

And these are just the long term effects of chronic or low level exposure to pesticides. In many third world countries, application of pesticides by hand spraying is common and this type of close contact with highly concentrated pesticides can have far more dramatic consequences. It has been estimated that at the global level 40,000 lives are lost annually due to pesticide application (WHO, 2002), representing 10% of all casualties in the agricultural sector (ILO, 1997).

Now let's discuss polyester. The main raw material used to produce polyester is oil. Oil is non-renewable so obviously, polyester production is not sustainable. Polyester is also not biodegradable. Any polyester textiles that end up in the land-fill will remain there for a very long time.

Close to 12 billion pounds of post consumer textile waste ends up in our land-fills every single year (EPA, 2008). With approximately half of this textile waste being non-biodegradable polyester, the implications are obvious.

Polyester production is an energy hog. Approximately 80 GJ of energy is required to produce one metric ton of polyester amounting to green house gas (GHG) emissions of approximately 5.5 mt CO2 per mt polyester (Robert Smith, Lenzing Fibers).

The textile industry is very important to developing economies. However, in its current state it is simply unsustainable. Conventional cotton is polluting our eco-systems, destroying our bio-diversity and poisoning our populations. Polyester is a big contributor to GHG emissions and choking our land-fills.

Organic cotton clothing, organic wool, hemp, Tencel, silk and bamboo offer a way to meet our fashion needs in a responsible manner.