Industry Report
global sales data about pesticides, as sales data is not an indicator of actual pesticide usage, the type of pesticide used, or conditions of use.
Myth 3: Cotton is a water-thirsty crop
The report says that calling cotton water-thirsty in isolation without any additional context is misleading. One of the original sources of this claim is from a 2003 report by the WWF called ‘Thirsty Crops: Our food and clothes: eating up nature and wearing out the environment?’. The reason being, cotton is grown in many water-stressed regions and can contribute to water management challenges. Cotton is a drought-tolerant plant adapted to arid regions. It is not a proportionally high consumer of irrigation water compared to many other crops. Seed cotton uses 3% of the world’s agricultural water globally, based on the latest available data from 2010, which is roughly equal to the 2.7% of arable land planted to cotton.
In summary, the relationship between farming, cotton and sustainable water management is complex.
Myth 4: Organic cotton uses 91% less water than conventional cotton Global retailers such as H&M and
There is no known critically-reviewed correlation between organic cotton farming and reduced water consumption in cotton farming
Patagonia have in the past quoted this statistic as fact, which this report says is an inaccurate claim. When brands of this size are using statistics like this in their promotion, it illustrates the vast scale of misinformation.
Textile Exchange noted in this report that as scientific understanding has evolved, it is now understood that comparison of specific LCA studies should not be used
to make broad claims about material categories, given the differences in regionally appropriate parameters and other assumptions used in each LCA study. Textile Exchange has confirmed this figure will be removed from its forthcoming website update. There is no known critically-reviewed correlation between organic cotton farming and reduced water consumption in cotton farming. Nor is cotton’s irrigated water consumption known to be determined by its organic or conventional status.
In conclusion
For Andrew Olah, founder of Transformers Foundation, the main takeaway is that there needs to be better transparency and traceability over materials. Rather than demonising a single material, brands and companies across the fashion supply chain should offer better reporting, monitoring and data on their environmental practices.
He says: “We envision a future where farmers tabulate the amount of pesticides they use, the amount of water they use, all of the different inputs to compare this with their yield and continue retrieving the stream of data to a product’s end of life.”
• To read the report in full visit www.
transformersfoundation.org
Cotton accounted for 24.4% of global fibre production in 2020
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