I've just bought a Howies organic cotton T-shirt,and it's really soft,and feels nicer to wear than normal cotton T-shirts.
Here's what goes into normal cotton.
(Taken from the Howies website.)
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100% cotton. 73% trueThe average 100% cotton T-shirt contains only 73% cotton. The rest is made up of chemicals and resins that were used to grow and make it. Yet, we all think cotton is one of the most natural things around. The truth is, it's not as nice as we'd all like to think.
Indeed, cotton is the world's most sprayed crop. It uses over a quarter of all insecticides used today (see list below). The way they grow it isn't good for the farmer's health, the water table's health, the factory worker's health, the river's health and eventually the sea's health.
That's why we use organic cotton. It costs us 30% more than normal cotton. It means our products cost a little more, but we think it's worth it. After all, you wear your T-shirt next to your skin for 10 hours a day. (Just think how Nicorettes work).
The average cotton crop is sprayed 8-10 times a season. Indeed, it takes 17 teaspoons of chemical fertilizers to raise the 9 ounces of cotton needed to make a T-shirt.
The most common pesticides used are: Chlorphynfos (causes brain and foetal damage, impotence and sterility), Cyanazine (causes birth defects and cancer), Dicofol (causes cancer, reproductive damage and tumours), Ethephon (causes mutations) Fluometuron (causes blood and spleen disorders), Metam Sodium (causes birth defects, foetal damage, mutation), Methyl Parathion (causes birth defects, foetal damage, reproductive damage and destroys immune system), MSMA (causes tumours)
Nailed (causes cancer, reproductive damage and tumours), Profenofos (causes eye damage and skin irritation), Prometryn (causes bone morrow, kidney, liver and testicular damage), Propargite (causes cancer, foetal and eye damage, mutation and tumours), Sodium Chlorate (causes kidney damage), Tribufos (causes cancer and tumours), and Trifluralin (causes cancer, foetal damage and mutation).
In America last year, farmers applied 53 million pounds of toxic pesticides to cotton fields. Out of the world's total insecticide usage, 25% is used just to farm cotton.
And, if that isn't enough, once the cotton has been grown it is dyed using toxic dyes. Then, to prevent it from creasing, it is finished with formaldehyde. Common sense says that can't be right. Go organic.
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Tim
