Did you know that it takes approx 2,720 litres of water to make a t-shirt? That’s our drinking quota for nearly 3 years. Organic cotton seems to be everywhere these days but just by adding the word organic to it doesn’t mean it’s the best solution. Over conventional cotton, the fact it uses less harmful chemicals is brilliant.⠀
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Organic cotton generally has much lower yields than the standard though (which we’re not a fan of to be clear). The world has gotten used to fast production – so this means more land and water is used for the same output (and despite soil getting better with crop rotation, most cotton farms don’t do this). Plenty of organic cotton is also still dyed in terrible ways or uses unethical labor during growing or in the garment production so double check for that when buying new.⠀
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Organic is better when growing cotton, but it remains a highly resource intensive with a big environmental and labour impact. It’s definitely not the best eco material out there and we cant sustain it at our consumption rates. It’s really commonly available and cheaper than alternatives which makes it easy to obtain and produce with though. That’s understandable but we hope businesses (particularly big ones) continue to focus on other better options to make them viable at scale over time too.⠀
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We need to buy better. Buy less. Wear our clothes more. And always keep pushing for better solutions 🙂
