Well, first it's important to know about some of the big problems caused by your average, non-organic, free trade cotton clothing.

So here’s a bit of information for you…

The problems of non-organic GM cotton:

In India there are now an average of 3 farmers committing suicide every day. And the reason? The new genetically modified crops; mainly the GM crop BT Cotton sold by the large corporation, Monsanto. The farmers are told that the crop will give hugely better yields. Growing BT Cotton is advertised as the way to escape poverty; to become rich overnight. So farmers take out loans from Monsanto to buy this new miracle crop which Monsanto sell for the cruel price of 4,000 rupees (around £55) per kilogram. Normally the farmers wouldn't have to buy seed as they could use the seeds saved from last years crops, but BT cotton is genetically modified to die after one year, so the farmers have to buy more seed and become further in dept to Monsanto and other seed companies.

Another genetic change made by the company makes the cotton dependent on large amounts of pesticides and fertiliser, which the farmers are then forced to buy from the seed companies. So GM crops like BT cotton can never be organic, and the changes to the plant which make it pesticide dependent actually lead to it becoming toxic. Not only to the animals that attempt to eat it  (1,800 sheep died last year feeding on the plants), but it also gives allergies to the people who work in the processing factories and the farmers who pick it. And this toxic cotton is quite possibly in some of the clothes you now own. Not a comforting thought, is it?

And to top it all off the BT cotton doesn’t give the huge yields promised. In fact, instead of the 1,500 kg/acre pledged by Monsanto, farmers get 200 to 300, if they're lucky. Often the crop simply fails completely. And even if it doesn’t fail, the fibre produced by BT cotton is such bad quality that farmers can only sell it for very little money. So the farmers are left with huge debts for seed and pesticides that they can never repay since the yields are so low.

And the next issue is that before BT cotton, farmers would grow their cotton along with their food. But since BT cotton has to be grown as monocultures (growing only one plant species in a large area), farmers can no longer grow their own food. For many poverty stricken farmers having to buy their food can be too much, especially when they are already desperately trying to pay off debts to Monsanto for this supposed “miracle crop” that keeps failing. Many farmers would rather commit suicide than watch their children starve.

And that's just one example of the horrors created by GM non-organic cotton. 

And what about Fairtrade...What's the issue with not wearing Fairtrade?

In recent years the global price for cotton has dropped to an all time low. In the USA and EU, government subsidies have protected cotton farmers from the effect of this price drop. However in developing nations the rules of so called “free” trade, prevent governments offering their farmers the same protection. Which leaves cotton farmers in many of the worlds developing nations swamped by poverty. Not only do the farmers suffer in the cotton trade, the sweatshop workers, forced to work long hard hours, often in unsafe conditions for very little pay, are also victims.

Yet all this is hidden from us, invisible at the end of long supply chains set up by giant corporations.

And here’s just one example of the injustice involved in the international cotton trade:

Uzbekistan is the worlds 2^nd largest exporter of cotton. It exports around 800,000 tonnes a year. The major destination of these exports is Europe, which receives the value of 350million US dollars each year.

Uzbekistan doesn’t use machinery to harvest its cotton. Instead it uses children. Every autumn the state shuts down the schools and send the tens of thousands of children, some as young as 7, into the fields. They are forced to undertake weeks of backbreaking labour, generally for no financial payment. In this totalitarian state, the use of torture and rape is considered normal by the police...  Could you honestly say you'd be happy to face this for refusing? This is modern day child slave labour.

On top of that farmers themselves also suffer. The Uzbek cotton industry is very profitable, but the cotton farmers make little profit as the government is almost completely corrupt.

Along with such outrageous human rights violations, the Uzbek cotton industry is also responsible for a huge environmental crisis. The 1.47 million hectares of cotton fields in Uzbekistan all needs irrigating. The incredibly inefficient irrigation system set up by the Uzbek government has actually led to the draining of the Aral Sea (one of the 4 largest bodies of fresh water in the world). The Aral Sea is now just 15% of its original size and has lost its 24 native fish species due to pollution from the huge amount of pesticides used in the Uzbek cotton industry. The tens of thousands of people once dependent on the Aral Sea have been turned into environmental refugees.

And all this has been caused by the greed of one country’s corrupt government.

And the worst thing; the chances are that as you read this you're unknowingly wearing clothes that contain Uzbek cotton.

Two hundred years ago, Europeans were dressed in slave labour produced cotton. What sort of progress have we made if the only differnce today is that we don't realize? 

So... 

...knowing about the problems of the international cotton trade we really really didn't want to carry on wearing clothes that weren't organic and fairtrade. But that's easier said than done. It's far harder to find a good range of ethical clothing than you'd imagine. So here's our solution, our own ethicaly sourced products. We hope you like them!