Cotton: A Material Without a Future?

A cotton shirt in the summer sounds like a smart idea, right? However, since 1993, we’ve known that the cotton industry uses too many chemicals and requires an excessive amount of water. It takes one liter of chemicals and ten thousand liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton. This amount of water is equivalent to the consumption of an adult man over eight and a half years. Most of these chemicals end up in surface water, which is drinking water for animals and other crops. Not a pleasant thought if you’ve just bought such a shirt.

Has nothing changed in those 31 years? Of course, NGOs and consumer organizations have made their voices heard, and producers have taken initiatives. Organic Cotton, Fair Trade, and BCI have made significant strides towards improvement. However, the problem is very large. Not only does cotton require too much water and chemicals, but the people working in the industry also do not earn a living wage. On average, a cotton farmer earns one dollar a day, while a living wage is three times that amount.

America plays an important role in the cotton world, but what we buy here is cotton from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and China (Xinjiang), where transparency is lacking. Cotton attracts many pests that destroy the harvest. Genetically modified cotton, especially in India, was used to combat this, but it was unsuccessful and led to more than ten thousand suicides among cotton farmers due to failed crops.

BCI has provided good guidelines with the best intentions, but are they being followed? There are too many measures at the environmental and human levels to follow all at once, so they speak of growing perspectives and self-learning capacity. It is a good idea to plant cotton one year and other crops the next, but the structure usually doesn’t work that way, and the risks are greater. This requires sufficient money in the bank, but without resources, it is a difficult story. Socially, there are so many exceptions that control is almost impossible.

Even if all that were to work, the biggest problem remains unsolved; cotton is not circular. It is not now, and it will not be for the foreseeable future. This is because cotton is a weak fiber, contributing significantly to the microfiber problem. Once dyed, it is no longer biodegradable in nature. Cotton is dyed because its original color, greige, looks very natural but also colorless. Cotton microfiber is now found all over the world, even in our lungs.

There is resistance to “man-made fibers,” mainly because they are not natural. Cotton is the natural alternative, albeit with the aforementioned issues, but polyester (man-made) is a sustainable alternative because it is fully circular. From a T-shirt, you can make a new T-shirt, and you can add functionalities. This used to be done with chemicals, but it can also be done with coffee grounds, a waste product that is carbonized and incorporated into the yarn. This makes the material breathable, absorbs and wicks moisture, reduces odor by 95%, and provides UV protection (UPF 50). Using the dope dye technique also saves 60-90% water and 60% CO2 emissions, chemicals, and energy.

There are sustainable solutions, perhaps with a different background, but they are extremely effective. The mindset needs to change completely, and that takes time, unfortunately, time we no longer have. By 2025, 50% of the clothing we bring to market must be recyclable, and half of that must be circular, from clothing to clothing. This specifically applies to the Netherlands, as Europe expects this by 2030. That seems far away, but it is very close. Processes are not yet aligned; collecting clothing is not a problem, but sorting various fabrics is. Most are not mono-materials but mixes of wool, cotton, polyester, viscose, elastane—the choice is vast. Only 100% polyester is easy to recycle, which we must unfortunately conclude, but processors only want that material, no mixes are allowed.

This means accelerating, thinking differently, and taking new paths. Unfortunately, cotton will not help us with this, which is a shame but inevitable.

Reg Nelemans
Entrepreneur in Sustainable Clothing