Let's make some clarifications right away: organic cotton means cotton from organic farming, that is, cotton grown according to the specifications that regulate organic certification; while conventional cotton is cotton from chemical farming and is often GMO (in fact, the largest world producers of cotton are China, the United States and India, which are also among the first 5 states that use GMO crops according to ISAAA data - International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications).
Although the hectares dedicated to cotton cultivation represent only 2.4% of the world's agricultural land, it is dramatic that it uses 25% of insecticides and 11% of total pesticides.
In 2014, a study on the life cycle of organic cotton (Life Cicle Assessment LCA) compared data relating to the production of organic cotton with those relating to the production of conventional cotton. The results highlight the reduction in the environmental impact of organic cotton compared to chemical cotton, in fact it reduces the probability of contributing to global warming by 46%. Specifically, growing organic cotton reduces water consumption by 91%; primary energy consumption by 62%; eutrophication (accumulation of pesticides in surrounding waters) by 26%; emissions that cause acidification by 70%.
To better understand the environmental and social impact in light of the data just cited, let's remember the tragic story of the Aral Lake located between the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. This lake from 1960 to 2007 reduced its waters by 90% due to the massive withdrawal of water to irrigate large cotton plantations, also causing serious pollution problems due to the massive use of chemicals. Furthermore, considering that the local population survived thanks to fishing, this disaster also had major social consequences. This outrage could probably have been avoided with the establishment of organic cotton plantations.
Organic cotton production represents 1% of world production and is struggling to take off compared to the production of organic food products. Surely the fact that cotton is not ingested is less interesting to many and is overlooked compared to food products. But on an environmental level, as we have just seen, this is not the case and using garments made from organic cotton is very important. It therefore seems that the main obstacle to overcome is a certain widespread selfishness even if paradoxically we forget that we too are part of the environmental system and that all the damage we cause to the planet turns against us.
Analyzing also the data of the processing and packaging of the finished garments opens an equally worrying chapter with the final result that in the various industrial phases the use of chemical substances can easily reach 1kg for every 1kg of textile products produced. This has a great environmental impact in terms of pollution and social because it exposes workers in the textile sector to continuous exposure to chemical products. For this reason it is preferable to opt for organic cotton garments that certify the origin of the raw material and that also report certifications regarding the processing of the garment. All these processes are certified by various national and international brands: Icea, Gots, Ivn, Oeko text, Fair Trade,...
