Do you have anything in your closet made from organic cotton? At this writing, I have exactly one thing, a nightgown. My husband Kelly is ahead of me, with four organic cotton t-shirts. We regularly buy organic produce at supermarkets and farmers’ markets, but it isn’t nearly as easy to go organic when buying clothing.

The availability of organic cotton clothing is mostly online, though some large retailers, including Wal-Mart, are beginning to carry it in retail stores. Since people like to try on clothing before buying it, it sells better when we can just go into a store and see if it fits!

You are definitely helping the planet when you choose organic cotton clothing. Conventionally grown cotton is a crop using extremely heavy applications of pesticides; in fact, over 10% of all pesticides used worldwide are applied to cotton. Read the rest >>>

I found this guest article quite interesting when I came upon it. Thinking about ecological matters can often stop at simple formulas, but here writer David Urban delves deeper into the use of bamboo fabric. I learned some things!

I also clicked through to his website on organic t-shirts and was pleased to see low prices on organic tees. I looked at the page for women’s organic cotton t-shirts and was pleased to see that they are made at factories powered by wind turbines. Did I buy any? Noo, not now — I don’t happen to NEED any new t-shirts right now, no matter how much I like what these folks are doing. But I bookmarked the site for later! — Zana

Are Bamboo T-Shirts Green Or Not?

By David Urban

If we’re going to talk about bamboo t shirts, we need to start with the bamboo itself. Because bamboo is naturally resistant to bacteria and fungus, it can be grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. Bamboo is the perfect organic crop.

Bamboo grows incredibly fast and can be harvested in 3-5 years. Classified as a grass, it is the fastest growing grass on Earth and can shoot up a yard or more per day. Acre for acre, Bamboo plantations absorb 5 times the amount of carbon dioxide and produce 35% more oxygen than trees.

In the last few years, bamboo fabric has been made into t-shirts, dresses, swimsuits, you name it. People love it for the way it feels, the way it drapes over the body, and the way it breathes. It feels like nothing else. But we can talk about the great qualities of bamboo, and the great qualities of bamboo fabric, but what you rarely hear is the word: rayon.

But the fact is this: bamboo clothing is made from rayon. Read the rest >>>

Green clothing is a topic close to my heart, so I was pleased to find this article with a few tips.  A couple of ways to be greener with your clothing are to own less clothing (making your closet a more pleasant place, most likely) and to buy used clothing at yard sales and thrift stores. This article considers new clothing. — Zana

What About Green Clothing?

By Todd Ashe

The main gripe some naturalists have with cotton, polyester, and many other clothing fibers most of us wear is that they’re laden with chemicals, and had all sorts of herbicides used while growing the products. You’ve probably noticed that new clothes smell, but that’s not a natural smell, but a chemical smell. Most of us are used to it by now, but some people do have negative reactions to the smell.

Some other people have bad reactions to some of the chemicals in the clothing, although we might not always know it’s because of the chemicals. For instance, a suit jacket made with horse hair and cotton will make some people itch, but it’s not the horse hair that’s doing it on its own. Rather, it’s a mixture of horse hair with chemically treated cotton that people are reacting to.

Instead of going the route that most people go, some folks are looking at other alternatives. One of those alternative is organic cotton. Read the rest >>>

This guest article has some interesting background on organic cotton.  It doesn’t mention that conventional cotton is grown with huge amounts of chemicals, which then remain in the soil. A few years ago, I thought of doing an organic cotton clothing website, but I couldn’t find enough sites to link to on the internet. Here’s one good place for organic cotton t-shirts:

Many of their designs have an organic option. — I buy organic cotton when I can. –  Zana

Organic Cotton – Leading a Return to the Simple Life

By Randy Pope

In the 1961 movie, “The Graduate”, a young Dustin Hoffman asks his college professor, upon graduating from college, “What do I do now?” To which the professor whispers, “plastics”. At the same time that the revolution against modest clothing captured the minds of America’s youth America began its love affair with synthetics. Now nearly one decade into the 21st century some of the aspects of the simple life are experiencing a come back. Read the rest >>>