Cotton is a natural, renewable, biodegradable and sustainable fiber. Cotton is fun and fashionable. Its beauty and natural comfort make the world a better place. Can you imagine a world without cotton.

It's often the first fiber we touch when we are born into the world… and it stays with us throughout our lives.

Consumer demand clearly shows that people want cotton in their lives all year long because the comfort and strength that cotton provides is empowering.   There is nothing fake about cotton, and   we believe it is the healthiest of all fibers.

To ensure that the population can continue to reap cotton’s natural benefits, today and in the future, the cotton industry as a whole is committed to the sustainable production of cotton, including utilizing new technology that positively impacts cotton’s environmental footprint. Most major cotton industry supports sustainability and the goal of environmental, economic, health and social responsibility for production agriculture.

• Cotton from Plant to Cloth
• Scientific Data Cotton
• Cotton and Water
• Cotton and Air Quality
• Cotton vs. Other Fibers

Cotton is a vegetable fibre that grows on the cotton plant. The fibre can be broken down into: 

Modern technology has enabled increased efficiency in cotton production. Specifically, 50% more cotton is produced worldwide today on the same amount of land as compared to 40 some years ago. Cotton is a natural fiber taken from the cotton plant. Cotton plants are perennial plants grown as annuals of the genus cotton [gossypium], a close relative of the hollyhock family that has beautiful flower blooms. Seedlings emerge from the soil within one to two weeks after planting. In about four to six weeks, flower buds known as squares, begin to appear. Attractive yellow or pinkish red flowers give way to small green bolls. (A boll is a segmented pod containing 32 immature seeds from which the cotton fibres grow.) Cotton bolls open 50 to 70 days after bloom, to show raw cotton fibres the sun. When the cotton is fully dried and fluffed, you know it is harvest time.

After the cotton is picked, it is transported to a cotton gin, where the lint is separated from the cottonseeds. A thorough cleaning process removes the trash, sticks and other foreign matter and the lint is compacted into bales (or lint that is packaged for market) for textile mills to pick up.  Meanwhile the cottonseeds also go through processing. Any remaining lint on them from the previous processing is removed, but not thrown away. This lint is usually very short, but can be used to make a variety of products such as toiletries, film, paper, medical supplies, candlewicks and twine. The seed then makes its way to the huller where the outer shell, or hull,  is used for livestock feed or other industrial uses. Oil is extracted from the remaining part of the seed to be used in snack foods, baking oils, salad dressings, cosmetics, rubber, soap and more. The kernel is then dried and ground to produce a protein filled livestock feed called cottonseed meal. Now for the main story - the journey of cotton fibre from the field to your cotton shopping bags. When the fibre arrives at our factory, the bales are first opened and laid out. The carding system next pulls the fibres so they can form a thin web that is twisted into a thin, untwisted rope called sliver. Combing removes the shortest fibres as well as any remaining impurities. After this, the sliver is twisted to make it stronger and sent through a roving machine that winds the sliver around spools. The cotton is now ready to be spun into yarn. Once the cotton fibres have been spun to yarn, they are ready for fabric forming. There are two ways to get fabric from yarn: weaving and knitting. Weaving makes fabric by interlacing two or more sets of yarns at right angles. There are three basic weaves, with numerous variations, and cotton can be used for all of them. Knitting, on the other hand, uses a series of needles to interlock loops of yarn in many variations. Finally, the fabric is born, and we produce our Cotton Shopping Bags.

Cotton and Water

Contrary to popular belief, cotton is a very drought-tolerant plant. And, in fact, the majority of cotton production is done so without irrigation - just the water of natural rainfall. When irrigation is used, it simply supplements rainfall during dry periods.

New irrigation systems and strategies used today, are substantially more water efficient than in previous decades.

Cotton and Air Quality

Agriculture and the cotton industry are modifying their impact through better management of agricultural practices on the farm and in processing agricultural products. 

The carbon footprint from the planting of cotton through ginning is fairly small, approximately 136 kg's of carbon equivalent emissions per acre.   In a no-tillage production environment, if credit is taken for the 181 kg's of carbon in the soil, cotton production actually stores 45 kg's more carbon than its production emits.  Taking additional credit for the carbon in the fiber , an acre of no-till cotton actually stores 204 kg's more of atmospheric carbon than was emitted in its production.

Cotton vs. Other Fibers

Cotton, of course, is not the only textile fiber available, but it has significant environmental and performance advantages over other fibers. A few examples:

• Cotton uses sunlight and converts it directly to a fiber without intermediate processing steps. That’s increasingly important, since processing other fibers, even those from biological sources, require a large amount of energy to produce fiber.
• Wool requires four times more land than does cotton to produce fiber.  Silk requires 20 times the land to produce the equivalent amount of silk fiber.
• Fibers that are based on corn and bamboo also require intermediate processing and additional chemicals to create a rayon-type fiber, which is still not a direct plant-based production of fiber.

As a natural, renewable fiber, cotton has obvious environmental and sustainability advantages over petroleum-based synthetic fibers. Unlike petroleum-based fibers, cotton is energy self-sustaining, and does not contribute to net green house gas emissions.

WHY COTTON

• Cotton plays a role in reducing greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming.   All cotton plants extract CO2 from the air and emit oxygen back into the atmosphere. The amount of cotton used in a pair of jeans (about 1 kg), takes 1.5 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere and generates 1 kg of O2.
  
• Cotton is a principal contributor to local economies.   The production and processing of natural fibers worldwide employs hundreds of millions of people, particularly in developing countries. Cotton, alone, generates hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity as it moves from production at the farm level through processing and retail.
  
• Consumers consider cotton as safe.   Results from the Lifestyle Monitor™ show that consumers consider cotton to be the safest fiber for the environment, with 66% calling it “extremely safe”.
  
• Consumers prefer natural fibers such as cotton.   Results from the Lifestyle Monitor™ show that 65% of global consumers would pay more for products made of natural fibers such as cotton.

Cotton - Environmentally Sound

 

Renewable and biodegradable cotton not only consume less energy in its life, but has non of the problematic end of their useful life dispose associated with fossil fuel based bags such as non woven polypropylene bags.

 

NWPP and Polypropylene type bags are more commonly referred to  'supermarket green bags.

Let us say from the outset that these supermarket type green bags have been the best solution to get us all to focused on the critical need to use reusable shopping bags. All business large and small must be commended for their support of these reusable bags. There is know doubt that their support has lead the way to a reduction in plastic bag consumption rate.

However; polypropylene is the material that the ‘supermarket green bags’ are made from - and it is plastic.   It is actually called non-woven polypropylene (NWPP) as the cross thatched ‘pattern’ on the material is stamped on to make it look like a woven fabric.   PP is a thermoplastic polymer - a type of plastic that can be melted down and recycled into such things as garden stakes, garden furniture and flower pots. Polypropylene (PP) are simpler polymer structures that do not need plasticizers, although they do use additives such as UV and heat stabilizers, antioxidants and in some applications flame retardants. NNWP type bags are the most popular to date, they have been the most cost effective solution to single use plastic shopping bags. These NWPP type bags are an alternative to single use plastic shopping bags because they are reusable and recyclable. However we must now consider the fact that the recycling rates for these plastic bags are extremely low. Only 3-5% of these plastic bags are getting recycled, our large supermarket companies are lifting more than their share of the responsibility by investing large amounts of their share holders money to try and encourage consumers to return the worn out nonwoven bags to recycle bins.

In addition, the economics of recycling plastic bags are not appealing. From the process of sorting, to the contamination of inks and the overall low quality of the plastic used in such plastics bags, means recyclers would much rather focus on recycling the vast quantities of more viable materials such as soda and milk bottles that can be recycled far more efficiently. If the economics don't work, it becomes increasing difficult to get the recycling efforts to work cost effectively.

For example, it costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32 (Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment as reported by Christian Science Monitor).