Why Organic

More than 85% of the world's clothing is made from cotton. In the United States alone, we use approximately 600 thousand tons of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on cotton fields each season!! In fact, 25% of all chemical pesticides used world wide are used on cotton crops. Did you know it takes about 1 pound of chemical pesticides to grow enough cotton for just one t-shirt?

Aldicarb, which is the pesticide used most frequently on cotton crops, is also the most acutely toxic pesticide registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (E PA). Just one drop absorbed through the skin is enough to kill a person. Almost 2 million pounds of Aldicarb is applied to crops in the United States annually.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 20,000 deaths in developing countries each year are atributable to incidental pesticide poisoning, many of these from cotton farming.

We all wear cotton in some form. When we get hot, the pores on our skin open to allow our bodies to sweat and cool off. But in doing so, these open pores also allow us to absorb things back in. Kind of makes you wonder what's in our clothes...and what might be getting back into our bodies, doesn't it?

Consumer demand for organic cotton currently stands just shy of $1 billion, showing that organic cotton offers a really strong economic option. Currently demand outstrips supply but this will change as farmers see they can still grow crops without chemical pesticides and be competitive.

There is a great selection of organic clothing at all price points, ranging from H&M and Target at the lower level, up to raw earth wild sky, edun, Deborah Lindquist and Loomstate at the designer level, and even all the way up to Couture designers who are using and developing some amazing new eco-fabrications.