Learned today that the European Union has rigid boundaries on the type of cotton they import - no toxic dyes, no cheap cotton laced with DDT, as several cottons from China and India were recently demonstrated to contain. The EU regularly tests their imported textiles carefully; we in the US do not.
One of the worst players? Your jeans.
They're full of pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides and defoliants. In California alone, over 7 million pounds of chemicals are used annually for cotton. Each pair of conventional jeans requires 13 oz of pesticides and fertilizers. That is very chemically intensive. Eek.
Here in the US, women on average have 8 pair in their closet.
There is one place in China, named Xingtang, Guangzhou, that produces 200 million pairs of jeans per year, and supplies 67% of the world appetite. Check out the pretty water coming out of the factory of this town and emptying into the "Pearl" River.
A Chief Medical Officer in Guangzhou said this water contains heavy metals that are "neurotoxic, carcinogenic, they disrupt the endocrine system," according to Dr. Tony Lu and as reported by CNN.
"They cause cancer of different organs." Dr. Tony Lu
So what about organic cotton jeans? What about jeans dyed in natural indigo? Like any Berkeley girl, my first stop was Jeremy's on College Avenue for three reasons:- I love their prices particularly on samples and salvage;
- An addendum to #1: my husband is getting very suspicious of my spending on "research" for my year of living organically;
- It's only 0.5 miles from my house - very low carbon footprint on my end at least.