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Organic Cotton A Blessing Or A Curse

Fashion Inc.

by Lauren Goldstein Crowe
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Nov 06 2007 12:00am EDT

Organic Cotton: A Blessing Or A Curse?

A report in WWD says that the global production of organic cotton rose 53 percent last year. The 5 biggest users -- Wal-Mart, Nike, Woolworths, Coop (Switzerland) and C&A (Germany) bought more than half of that output. That is the good news. The bad news is that in order to produce organic cotton at a price that these stores can use it, they have to buy it from developing countries. Turkey, India, China, Syria and Peru were the biggest producers and the industry is shrinking in the U.S.. The other bad news is that to produce cotton, even organic cotton, takes tons and tons of water. So what do hard-core environmentalists suggest? Commenters at Grist say choose hemp.

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