Organic Cotton - Green or Tan?
Organic cotton may not be the great solution it seems at first glance.
Is organic cotton really the environmental superhero it’s often touted as being?
It certainly seems to be when you compare it to conventional cotton. Conventional cotton production is one of the most environmentally hazardous agricultural practices worldwide:
• It is the most pesticide-intensive crop on Earth, accounting for 24% of global insecticide sales for only 2.4% of the world’s arable land.
• Many of the pesticides used on cotton are carcinogenic.
• Cotton workers and those living near cotton fields have suffered from neurological disorders, impaired vision, chromosomal aberrations, leukemia and other cancers.
• Conventional cotton uses huge amounts of water, which leads to depletion of the water table and increased soil salinity.
• The large machinery used to harvest conventional cotton compacts soil and leads eventually to the formation of infertile hardpan.
In contrast, organic cotton requires no chemical input, making it safer for humans and the environment. While transitional cotton sometimes requires more water than conventional, it’s not unusual for established fields of organic cotton to require less, because the healthier soil resulting from organic farming methods is better able to retain moisture. And organic cotton is often picked by hand, protecting the soil from compaction.
But is organic cotton production really Green?
Organic cotton is certainly better than conventional, but it’s still cotton. Cotton is an extremely heavy feeder, which means it sucks up a huge amount of nutrients from the soil. Yes, you can rotate it with other crops, but still it’s not easy on the soil.
Even organic cotton still requires heavy irrigation, especially in dry regions like California and the Middle East. As the world’s population continues to grow, water use is fast becoming an issue of major importance worldwide. Does it make sense to rely so heavily for our fiber needs on such a water-intensive crop?
Another drawback to cotton is its climactic requirements. It needs mild winters. This leads to larger areas of monocropping, as cotton farms are restricted to only those areas with a suitable climate – which in turn can lead to problems with crop epidemics and regional economic dependence.
Let’s compare apples to oranges.
When you compare organic to conventional cotton, organic is clearly the winner from an environmental and health standpoint. But let’s take a step back and compare organic cotton to other fiber plants.
To simplify matters, let’s just mention hemp and bamboo. Both these plants grow just fine without chemical input. They need little or no irrigation – certainly far less than cotton. And they can be grown in a far larger geographic area. In addition, both these plants can be used for far more than just their fiber. (And no, I’m not talking about anything illegal – industrial hemp has no wacky “side effects!”)
It’s so easy to assume something is “Green” just because it’s less “brown” than the status quo. But it’s about time we started differentiating between what’s truly “Green” and what’s merely “tan.” Organic cotton is a great thing in that it’s way better than conventional. But if we truly want to move towards sustainability, don’t you think it’s about time to start choosing the Greenest options more often than just Greener ones?
While it is true that growing cotton requires an unfathomable amount of of water (27 gallons to make one t-shirt), organic cotton consumes far less water than its evil twin because it is a rotation crop.
Bamboo is in fact not as “eco” as some might think. While the plant itself is sustainable, a renewable resource that requires no chemicals to grow, the actual process of turning it into a fiber actually has a negative impact. There are 2 ways to produce bamboo. Mechanical, using machinery is used in only 5-10% of bamboo production. However it is the other 90-95% of bamboo that is made chemically, in a chemical soup if you will, which results in a rayon.
Canada has new regulation around the labeling of bamboo fabrics, and if processed chemically it must be labeled as bamboo rayon. Other man-made cellulosic fibers, such as tencel, are produced in a closed loop system so it is much more sustainable than bamboo production.