Cotton & The Environment

Did you know that the average tee-shirt will generate 28 times its weight in harmful carbon emissions in its lifetime?

Well you like me might wonder well, why and how is that? It comes down to a number of issues:

1. Methods that are used in farming the cotton.
2. The fact that most cotton is then transported across large distances to reach the processing/manufacturing plants.
3. Methods that are used to process the raw material, to the knitting and dying processes.
4. The later washing, drawing and packaging of the producting.
5. And the fact that most products once packaged for shipping then travel long distances to reach the place where they are then sold.

Transportation accounts for a large percentage of the carbon footprint that is given off. The fact that most materials are not grown where the product is made and the fact that most of our products are no longer made locally not even remotely so.

People might think that Cotton is a wonderful alternative to all the plastic fabrics out there such as polyester or nylon and other mixes there of. However, Cotton isn't always the great alternative.

1. Cotton is one of the most pesticide-intensive crops grown in the world.
2. Cotton farming and the production accounts for a quarter of the world's total pesticide use.

Links: 
- Harmonious Living, Your Carbon Footprint - Read The Lables: http://www.harmoniousliving.co.za/Environment/Eco-Friendly/Your-Carbon-Footprint-Check-the-Labels/
- Earth Trust, Carbon Footprint Reduction Table

On the Subject of Cotton

Fiber Footprint Calculator; So, Candace found this earlier today or yesterday and sent me the link to it. It's rather interesting. There were a lot of other facts on this website as well that I found interesting.

This website is run by a group in California, advocating for cleaner cotton in the state. They include facts about cotton, ways to support cleaner cotton. I also found it amusing that they have fashion pictures for garments made out of cleaner cotton.



The video was taken from the website above, found on this page. But yeah, anyway it's kinda interesting there are more facts and stuff on there if you want to poke around. :)

A Shot!

So a while back I asked a question, not really expecting to get an answer. Well, I got up today and was checking through things emails, deviantArt and such. A friend of mine on DA gave my question a shot. *chuckles* Thank you, Rick. :)

Did you know that in North America alone, that around 1.4 billion cotton t-shirts are sound ever year? Talk about another big number that's hard to comprehend. I don't know about you but it's hard for me to wrap my head around something like that. If you took 1.4 billion t-shirts out into a field and piled them all into one big pile how big do you think it would be? If someone who knows how to do things mathematically and wants to give it a shot, please do.

" So... If you take 1.4 billion T-shirts and pile them up, figuring you can pile (my wild guess) 3 T-shirts per inch, the answer is 7365 miles.

1.4 billion T-shirts is ~4.5 T-shirts per person in the US.  

Hey, you're welcome. They'd make a tall stack, which would reach into "medium earth orbit", higher than the Hubble telescope. If it fell over, it would stretch farther than New York to Beijing." V.


I heard a guy give a lecture one time about people and their environments and... He got to talk about numbers somehow and how we have a hard time comprehending really large numbers or distances. This is rather like that for me. It's like whoa that's big and yet I completely and totally can't even picture it (accept in cartoon style animation ^^: Little people running away, random chicken little moment, "The Sky is falling!" and so forth.)

On the Subject of Cotton

So what about Cotton? I'm sure probably everyone has at least one item in their closets--probably more--that is made out of cotton. A cotton t-shirt, cotton underwear (at least mine is, unless of course you prefer silky stuff but we won't go any further with that train of thought =P .) Well, let's start with the basic's, cotton comes from a cotton plant. The original cotton plants were only found in tropical regions between the 5th and 4th millennium BC (according to Wikipedia, I actually got a book out of the library to but it's out in the car and it is wet and nasty outside, so I will have to make use of it later.) The original form of the cotton plant, did not spread very far due to the fact that it could not survive well in harsh or colder climates. It's spread was limited to parts of India and into parts of Africa; this variety of cotton had a much shorter fiber then the longer Egyptian variety.

The second type of cotton was supposedly found in China, and had adapted to grow in a much harsher climate. This variety of cotton quickly spread from China across Eurasia and into parts of Africa. It was later that the American variety of cotton was also found. Through out a long span of time different kinds of cotton has been spun, woven and dyed. The seeds were also used for their oils. According to the article on Wiki, the earliest known cultivate that was discovered in the Americas occurred in Mexico, around 8,000 years ago.

Originally cotton was only used as a weft thread on the loom and linen as the warp, "Hundreds of years before the Christian era cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the Mediterranean countries. In the 1st cent. Arab traders brought fine muslin and calico to Italy and Spain. The Moors introduced the cultivation of cotton into Spain in the 9th cent. Fustian's and dimities were woven there and in the 14th cent. in Venice and Milan, at first with a linen warp. Little cotton cloth was imported to England before the 15th cent., although small amounts were obtained chiefly for candlewicks. By the 17th cent. the East India Company was bringing rare fabrics from India. Native Americans skillfully spun and wove cotton into fine garments and dyed tapestries. Cotton fabrics found in Peruvian tombs are said to belong to a pre-Inca culture. In color and texture the ancient Peruvian and Mexican textiles resemble those found in Egyptian tombs." (Wiki)

Alright out of time, more on Cotton later.

Sources & Interesting Places:
Cotton Incorporated, http://www.cottoninc.com/
Cotton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton
Natural Cotton Council of America, http://www.cotton.org/
Miss MacDonald Had A Farm, Cotton, http://www.valdosta.edu/~clmcdonald/topic.html

Adaptation and Curiousity

So, I sent the link out to for the blog around facebook, trying to entice various people I know and people they know to come around. What I got back was not what I expected--this could be good and this could be bad, I'm not yet sure. Anyway, what I got was not an answer to my question but answers to the two rhetorical questions I asked at the beginning:

Do you know where your cloths come from?

Do you know where your cloths are made?

This wasn't what I wanted; however, I did find the answers interesting. I'm not sure what to do with this information but I'm going to share it. If anyone else would like to answer these questions please feel free to write a comment. This blog is open and even those of you who are not blogger members can post. :)

A few of the answers I got were as follows:

1 -- No, I don't know where my clothes come from. I just buy them without thinking about it.

2 - I don't know what they're made of, either, unless I'm looking for a particular fiber. I'm usually more concerned with fit than with fiber.

1-- I think about it sometimes. I'd like to do the work necessary to buy all fair trade or made in US clothing, but I'm afraid I generally don't. I'm a sucker for a good buy on cute clothes.

2-- I wear a lot of cotton, but I wear other kinds o fiber too. I usually take note of it before I wash it so I don't ruin it.

1- I'm a label reader and I notice that a lot of my clothes are made in China. I even got one from Indonesia. Rarely do I see a label that says "Made in the USA."

2- Most of my clothes are cotton, cotton blends. I have a few rayon dress shirts but mostly good 'ol cotton.

Now a few facts to go along with this. A lot of people think cotton when you say natural fiber. A lot of people just assume that buying cotton is better then anything else that is out there. After all it's natural, people have been wearing cotton for a long time. I read an ararticle last week while I was looking for information on rayon. The article happened to be about Hemp cloth, which isn't something I know a whole lot about (other then you can by this really fantastic hemp/silk blend of fabric on Dharma Trading Co. and I really want some. The hemp image was taken from, The Yarn Tree, Fiber, Hemp, Top)

You can read the article I was reading ("Sustainable Textiles urged at U.N. Conference," by PR Newswire, November 30, 2005.) It's fairly short and quiet interesting:

Did you know that in North America alone, that around 1.4 billion cotton t-shirts are sound ever year? Talk about another big number that's hard to comprehend. I don't know about you but it's hard for me to wrap my head around something like that. If you took 1.4 billion t-shirts out into a field and piled them all into one big pile how big do you think it would be? If someone who knows how to do things mathematically and wants to give it a shot, please do.

What does that big number of t-shirts sold in North American have to do with Hemp fabric? Well, if we stopped making things out of cotton--on a global scale--and started making it out of hemp instead. We would increase the yield, in essence we'd get more yardages out of a smaller area of land. By producing hemp instead of cotton we would free up an area of farmland nearly the size of the State of Florida (Florida is 2000 square miles. I found this from the Florida Quick Facts US Census Bureau, I never knew they kept all sorts of facts like that. It makes sense though I suppose, it does rather make feel slightly uncomfortable though.)

"With textile crops like Bamboo, Soy and Hemp, we have the ability to grow, harvest and produce textiles at a fraction of the environmental impact of traditional crops like cotton," said Hemptown CEO Jerry Kroll. "Pound for pound a crop like Hemp requires no pesticides, toxic fertilizers or fresh water irrigation and far less land and energy," (Article: Sustainable textiles urged at U.N. Confrence)

So there's a little bit of information. A sneak peak at what's hopefully to come in the future: Something more in depth on Bamboo as I've heard a number of different stories regarding the use of bamboo in textiles. I will look into that and see what I can find out. I'm also hoping to do a bit more looking into the history of hemp, other uses of hemp and so forth and so on.

Alrighty more about Hemp and Bamboo later. Have a good day. *disappears*