Material: a close-up on cotton (ep. 1)

Cotton is everywhere in fashion and accessories, accounting for 60-70% of textile production worldwide alone. Its widespread use does come with an impact on the planet and the workers involved in its production. As a supplier of cotton-based products for some of our customers, we have gone through the mass of information on conventional, organic and recycled cotton, just for you.

Episode 1

Conventional or “virgin” cotton

This cotton is intensively farmed, particularly in China and India. Cotton is an extremely thirsty plant: producing one kilo of cotton requires between 7,000 and 29,000 litres of water! If we take a standard 200 g tote bag as an example, it involves an average of 3,600 litres of water and 5.2 kg of CO2 emissions. That’s not even mentioning the fact that traditional cotton is one of the most pesticide-heavy crops. Cotton plantations account for more than 20% of insecticides used in agriculture, despite only making up about 3% of farmed areas. ^{1, 3}

Worse yet, the whole cotton production chain is a major CO2 emitter and has a significant environmental and societal impact. Farmers and residents close to plantations are exposed to chemical additives, working conditions are abusive and pay is insufficient, water becomes polluted, the soil becomes poorer and natural resources are exhausted, local fauna and flora suffer, and more.

The textile industry alone has more than 700 specific labels! It can be impossible to pick through them, and we can therefore be easily fooled by certifications or initiatives that are actually nothing more than greenwashing.

We ask our cotton suppliers to be Oeko-Tex Standard 100  certified, because for us, this is the basic quality guarantee for the material in terms of both health and the environment (no products that are toxic to the body and the environment). In order for an item to be Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certified, each of its components (the raw fabric, sewn threads, labels, buttons, even dyes and prints) must have been tested and approved in accordance with the test requirements of Standard 100. This means also that the supplier is subject to regular audits to ensure compliance. ²

Inovacomm uses Oeko-Tex Standard 100 as a reference because it is a globally harmonised certification system for all raw, semi-finished and finished textile products at all stages of the manufacturing process, as well as for all ancillary materials. Based on its complete and strict range of parameters, the test criteria and threshold values go far beyond applicable national and international standards. It is thanks to this that the Oeko-Tex Standard 100 is a benchmark certification in the textile industry.