According to a recent article from Quartz, organic cotton might not be as eco-friendly as we thought.
Citing a panel conducted by Cotton Inc., a not-for-profit research group overseen by the cotton industry, the article explains that organic cotton can be just as harmful to the environment as the non-organic variety because of its inefficiency as a crop.
“It will take you about 290 gallons of water to grow enough conventional, high-yield cotton to produce a t-shirt,” the article says. “To grow the same amount of organic cotton for a t-shirt, however, requires about 660 gallons of water.”
In addition to requiring more water, organic cotton also has a lower yield. So, to get the same amount of fiber from an organic crop that you would from a conventional crop, you’ll have to “plant more organic plants, which means using more land… [and] that land, of course, has to be tended and irrigated.”
The article does note, however, that less chemicals are traditionally used in the production process of organic cotton. But, even then, the chemicals that tend to wreak the most havoc on the environment are the ones used in the finishing process (read: dyes, detergents, etc).
So what is the conscious consumer to do?
“Buy better clothes. Buy less of them. Wear them more. There’s no more certain way to reduce your impact than to reduce the amount of clothes you consume and to keep those clothes for a long time.”
Sounds good to us.
You can read more about it at Quartz.
