Organic cotton: The GOTS certificate has landed
I’ve always been keen to reduce my environmental footprint. After all, why should things that I use have negative effects for other people, animals, and the wider environment? This principle extends to things I’ve made - lately the Fold+Rºll. So when I found I could have the Fold+Rºll printed on organic cotton in Poland by CottonBee I was really happy (they also plant trees for every order!).
Cotton is a huge global consumer of pesticides and water. Use of high levels of pesticides and insecticides has severe environmental impacts, including reducing the essential insect populations that support wildlife and pollination of plants as well as polluting water sources and contaminating food supplies. They can also be toxic to the farm workers applying them, and even to people living in the area.
There are a number of initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of cotton - from full organic certification to the Global Organic Textile Standard (where cotton is farmed to organic standards) to the Better Cotton Initiative which supports farmers moving to more sustainable ways to control pests and phase out highly hazardous pesticides.
Printing the Fold+Rºlls
When I had my first run of Fold+Rºlls printed I found I could order the GOTS organic certification for our actual batch of cotton. So I did. It takes a while to process - landing long after all the fabric has been cut and sewn. But I’m delighted to say it’s here now!
Our certification follows the journey of the fabric to the printer and audits it to this point. To be a fully organic product we would then have to have the production certificated too - which is a bit too much for our tiny, just launched, enterprise. However, it’s something we’re looking at for the future.
Being small and eco friendly is quite hard - but with CottonBee we were able to print our first few samples and then scale up to hundreds of metres of cotton. They use a sustainable printing technology which minimises water, energy and chemical consumption and are certified by the GOTS and OEKO-TEX.
It’s not just the production. Being sustainable by design is important too. I spent a lot of time fitting on the design specification to fabrics to ensure that we don’t create waste fabric in production as well. And when it comes to packing, I’ve stuck to recyclable paper and card packaging to reduce landfill. This is a theme I started nearly 20 years ago with my first foray into sustainable textiles, Makepiece and I’m not going to stop now!
It’s one small step at a time when it comes to looking after the environment - and sometimes it feels like we’re wading through treacle. But I’m convinced that these little steps mount up as I see (and work with) more and more companies that are on the same path.
