I’ve recently come across a number of very interesting facts about cotton. About how it is grown and what is needed to produce it.
Cotton is definitely not harmless.
Cotton is something we could use a lot less of and a lot of people would benefit by doing so. Finding a sustainable alternative to cotton should be a priority to the fashion and clothing industry in the long run and there are already existing alternatives and surely more to come in the near future - bamboo, polyester staple fibres and hemp fibres being the best found so far.
Hemp is environmentally friendly in many ways. It can displace the use of cotton, which requires massive amounts of chemicals harmful to people and the environment.
The production of cotton consumes 50% of the pesticides sprayed in the entire world. Hemp has a deep root system that helps to prevent soil erosion, removes toxins, provides a disease break, and aerates the soil to the benefit of future crops.
Have a look at some facts about cotton:
Cotton is planted on 2.4 percent of the planet’s arable land, but accounts for 24 percent of all insecticides and 11 percent of global pesticides.
Globally, the annual cotton production evaporates 210 billion cubic meters of water and pollutes 50 billion cubic meters of water. This is 3.5 % of all global water use for crop production.
In order to get 1 kg of final cotton textile, one requires 11,000 litres of water (as a global average). Source.
Nearly 70 percent of the all cotton is grown in China (25 percent), USA (17.8 percent), India (10.2 percent), Pakistan (9.5 percent), and Uzbekistan (6.1 percent). In Uzbekistan the Aral Sea lost 80 percent of it’s volume due to water being diverted for cotton upstream.
While 60 percent of the nitrogen applied to cotton fields is removed via harvested seed cotton, 40 percent of it remains behind, mostly in the local fresh water supply. Source.
You don’t need me to tell you that the cotton t-shirt you just bought at H&M for £4.99 does not cover the costs to process the contaminated water downstream or for communities to find new sources of fresh water.
