Cotton Facts

For quite some time I have believed in the benefits of organic food, after all we really must take care with what we ingest.  Over the past few years I have been noticing organic cotton around.  I felt it was a bit too expensive to waste money on.  Never stopping to think about the fact that it is grown in the very same soil where we grow our food.  That the run off affects the very same water we drink every day.  I started to look a bit more into cotton to see exactly what the facts were.  This is what I discovered:

Cotton Facts:

Conventional cotton cultivation inflicts a heavy environmental toll. 

• Cotton uses approximately 25% of the world’s insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, and defoliants.).
• Cotton pesticides can enter the human food chain via cotton seed oil used in processed foods. The meat and dairy products from cows fed cottonseed meal, trash from cotton gins and cotton straw may also contain pesticides that were applied to cotton.
• Eighty-four million pounds of pesticides were sprayed on the 14.4 million acres of conventional cotton grown in the U.S. in 2000 (5.85 pounds/ acre), ranking cotton second behind corn in total amount of pesticides sprayed.
• Over 2.03 billion pounds of synthetic fertilizers were applied to conventional cotton the same year (142 pounds/acre), making cotton the fourth most heavily fertilized crop behind corn, winter wheat, and soybeans.
• The Environmental Protection Agency considers seven of the top 15 pesticides used on cotton in 2000 in the United States as “possible,” “likely,” “probable,” or “known” human carcinogens (acephate, dichloropropene, diuron, fluometuron, pendimethalin, tribufos, and trifluralin).
• It takes roughly one-third of a pound of chemicals (pesticides and fertilizers) to grow enough cotton for just one T-shirt.

In contrast, organic cotton has all the benefits of organic agriculture, in addition to providing stronger, healthier cotton. For now it costs a little more, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Source: The Sustainable Cotton Project

I was amazed at the impact what we wear & sleep on can have on the environment.  I wondered why I had never thought about it before.  Now, I’m not going to throw out all of my cotton items & buy organic but I am going start buying the organic versions when I have the need and opportunity.  Each of us doing our part to help protect the planet we live on can have major impacts on the health of everyone!  Tomorrow I want to look more into sustainability.

~ by digitalpoetry on December 5, 2007.