Organic cotton is a far superior alternative to chemicals laden conventional cotton.
More and more farmers around the world are growing cotton without costly, harmful chemicals. Their yield is high and the quality of the cotton they grow is equal to or better than conventionally grown cotton. Their methods support bio-diversity and healthy eco-systems, improve the quality of soil.
Growing organically takes more time, requires more knowledge and skill, and, at least for now, costs a bit more. But it is worth it since it doesn't contain any hidden costs to our environment.
Organic cotton is more expensive to harvest. To reduce harvesting costs and improve cotton yields, conventional cotton harvesting uses a variety of harvest-aids such as spraying cotton fields with chemicals like thidiazuron to defoliate cotton plants by removing mature and juvenile leaves to facilitate machine harvesting, suppress growth of new plant leaves, desiccants containing pyraflufen ethyl, carfentrazon, dimethipin, paraquat, and glyphosate to kill and dry leaves remaining on the cotton plants and weeds after chemical defoliation, and chemicals containing the active ingredient ethephon to accelerate the opening of the cotton bolls. Organic cotton harvesting is done without the use of these chemical harvest-aids and is more labor intensive resulting in higher harvest costs.
Organic fabrics are more expensive to manufacture. Because of the relatively small quantities of cotton involved, it is more expensive to gin, clean and manufacture organic cotton fabric. Almost all organic cotton fabric is manufactured in facilities that also process and manufacture conventional cotton fabrics from conventionally grown chemical cotton. But, before the organic cotton can be processed in these facilities, all the cotton gins and weaving and knitting machines must be cleaned of all residues from the processing of the conventional cotton. Of course, the facility owners add the additional costs for this cleaning and equipment downtime to the production costs for the organic fabrics. This all contributes to driving up the costs for producing organic cotton fabrics.
Organic garments are more expensive to manufacture for many reasons. Some of them relate to the relatively small size of the organic clothing market and the need to frequently share manufacturing facilities with conventional clothing. Like the manufacturing process, all sewing machines and work areas must be cleaned of conventional garments and contaminants before being used for sewing organic garments.
But there is another more significant factor why much conventional clothing is so inexpensive – cheap labor that often borders near being sweatshop or indentured. Social pollution of sweatshops in the garment industry is well documented. Basically, most large clothing retailers contract with many dozens of clothing manufacturing facilities scattered in developing countries around the world. Many of these facilities exploit the poorest and most desperate workers and pay pennies a day to workers who sew long hours under appalling conditions to make those cheap, inexpensive shirts, pants and undergarments that fill the large, mega big name stores in our home towns and shopping malls.
We disagree with these practices and promote fair wages, good work environment and eco-friendly products.
All our organic cotton products are CERTIFIED to keep is authentic and to promote eco-friendly movement.