This can be answered by a picture and a true story about how conventional cotton has been used as a ‘cash crop’ and almost evaporated the formerly fourth largest lake in the world, called the Aral Sea. In the 1950’s the Soviet Union began using this rivers to irrigate the surrounding agricultural area which mainly included cotton, a process that is continued to this day.

The Aral Sea

Cotton is also called as ‘white gold’ or ‘cash crop’, as most of our clothing is cotton or cotton based. In spite of all the alarming messages about the impact of the methods used to cultivate this cash crop on our planet and human lives, many economies in the world are still depended on this type of conventional cotton. 

Cotton production uses agricultural chemicals heavily and therefore offers a significant risk of pollution of freshwater ecosystems with nutrients, salts and pesticides. The application of pesticides in cotton production is disproportional compared to the area under cotton cultivation. Besides, most insecticides used for cotton production are hazardous. I wish somebody had told me about the gallons of water and the pesticides that was used to produce the jeans and denims in my wardrobe, would have definitely made a better choice. 

“Conventional cotton (as opposed to organic cotton) has got to be one of the most unsustainable fibres in the world,” says fashion designer and environmentalist Katharine Hamnett. “Conventional cotton uses a huge amount of water and also huge amounts of pesticides which cause 350,000 farmer deaths a year and a million hospitalisations.”

So, how is Organic cotton produced?

Image Courtesy http://aboutorganiccotton.org/

Basically organic cotton is produced with everything natural without disturbing the environment by happy humans.

What kind of cotton do we use to bring sustainable fashion to you?

For cotton based clothes, we use two types of fabric. One that is organic cotton and the other is waste fabric donated to us which we like to call rescued fabric. The purpose is to reuse the already existing cotton instead of dumping them in the landfill. The rescued fabric can or cannot be organic, the brands that we represent use only materials that are ethically sourced.

Join is in our journey to make fashion more sustainable, wear organic or a rescue fabric.

Please write to us if you have any questions about organic cotton on info@onlyethikal.com and we can talk about it.