Organic cotton uses 91% less water than conventional cotton*. This is because organic cotton is not artificially irrigated and grown with natural rainwater. In organic cotton farming, cotton fibres are handpicked rather than machine picked. This means they end up longer and stronger because the pickers are more delicate with the fibres, preventing breaking or fraying. This results in the finished product being a lot more plush and durable. Conventional cotton fibres are weaker and not nearly as soft or durable due to the chemicals used in their farming process, the machine-picking process only exaggerates these issues, so if you want to go for a cotton based product, always opt for organic cotton when you can.
Why is conventional cotton farming so bad for the environment?
It takes the equivalent of around eighteen 10 minute showers (2700 litres of water) to make just one conventional cotton t-shirt. A lot right? Conventional cotton farming also uses a horribly large amount of chemically produced fertilisers. 6% of the world's pesticides and 16% of the world's insecticides, more than any crop in the world, even though only 2.5% of the world's cultivated land are cotton crops. Not only is the use of chemically produced fertilisers incredibly bad for the environment, so is the production of the fertilisers in the first place. When used, these fertilisers release Nitrogen Oxide (laughing gas) which is 300 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2, and we know our ozone layer does not need that. To leave it on a good note though, in 2018/19 just 0.93% of global cotton production was organic, but this went up by 31% from that previous year, showing that consumer and business concerns and habits are meaning things are changing and moving in the right direction.