Greener Than You Think

The key to saving the environment is not recycling. As Thoreau so wisely noted, we must strike at the root, not hack at the branches.

—TERE SAUDAVEL

 

 

 

 

Now that I know I’m not destroying the planet by raising sheep, I look into the environmental, political, and social aspects of wool and its “competitors,” cotton and synthetics. After a week of googling my fingers to the first knuckle, I decide the only way to avoid causing any environmental or political or social damage with my clothing choices is to forgo even the loincloth and go buck naked. My instinct is to drop the whole subject and not think about it. If I can’t bear to schlep the recycling into town, what am I doing paying attention to my clothing?

Cotton is the most-produced, most widely used fiber on the planet. Out of the annual world production of natural fibers of 30 million tons, 20 million are cotton. Jute comes in at 3 million tons, and wool is third at 2 million tons.

Cotton uses more than 25 percent of all the insecticides in the world, and 21 percent of all the herbicides, yet cotton is farmed on only 3 percent of the world’s farmland. The pesticides and synthetic, oil-based fertilizers often end up in groundwater, surface water, and our drinking water. In 1995, pesticide-contaminated runoff from cotton fields in Alabama killed 240,000 fish. Twelve of the top fifteen cotton pesticides in California caused birth defects, ten caused multiple birth defects, and thirteen were toxic or very toxic to fish or birds or both. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seven of the top fifteen pesticides used on cotton in the United States are considered “possible,” “likely,” “probable,” or “known” human carcinogens.

The U.S. cotton industry has reduced its use of chemicals, but how many of us buy cotton clothing from other countries? The Environmental Justice Foundation advises people to “pick your cotton carefully,” since in many developing countries cotton involves child labor, rampant use of pesticides, and using too much water. I was shocked to see the photos of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, which has become a desert because two rivers were diverted to water cotton fields.

During cotton harvest, producers apply herbicides to defoliate the plants to make picking easier. Then to convert cotton into something soft enough for us to wear, it must be chemically processed. After it’s washed, cotton fiber is coated with polyvinyl alcohol sizing to make it easier to weave. After it’s woven, it’s bleached. Then the sizing is removed with a detergent. Then it’s washed with sodium hydroxide.

The cotton story keeps getting worse. The final step for most cotton garments, those easy-care clothes that are soft, wrinkle-resistant, stain- and odor-resistant is “finishing.” Any fabric or clothing labeled static-resistant, wrinkle-resistant, permanent-press, no-iron, stainproof, or moth-repellent likely includes some synthetic fiber or is a natural fiber that’s been coated with a chemical. Farmers can’t plant wrinkle-free cotton. To make it wrinkle free, the fabric has been treated. Chemicals used in finishing often cause allergic reactions and include “formaldehyde, caustic soda, sulfuric acid, bromines, urea resins, sulfonamides, and halogens.” Some imported cotton clothes are now impregnated with long-lasting disinfectants that are hard to remove. That explains the two cotton shirts I bought for only $15 apiece. They were fine until I washed them. Now they smell permanently like bug spray and are unwearable.

All this news about cotton makes me sad. I thought cotton was a clean, pure product. Organic cotton is of course an option, but I’ve noticed it’s not readily available in a wide range of colors. In fact, it’s as if the organic cotton mills think people who care about the planet only look good in cream, taupe, and pale green. Where’s the bright turquoise organic T-shirt? Maybe organic dye doesn’t come in turquoise, or fuchsia, or screaming yellow.

I’m a little horrified at what goes into growing and processing cotton. In fact, if you compare raising sheep with growing cotton, wool looks pretty good. Raising sheep for wool, if done well, uses minuscule amounts of pesticides and herbicides. You don’t need to kill weeds in a pasture because sheep will eat them. How great is that?

I’ve decided to continue wearing cotton, but I resolve to find ways to replace a cotton garment with wool. I wonder if anyone makes wool underwear.

Wool’s other “competitor” is synthetic fabric. Most synthetics are made from chemicals. Most chemicals are made from petroleum. That’s right. Bubbling crude. Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.

A few synthetic fibers come from renewable resources. Tencel and rayon both come from tree pulp. But otherwise, synthetics are made out of oil. The oil is used to make chemicals, then the chemicals are combined in creative ways and extruded through tiny holes to create threads. Remember those little Play-Doh factories where you could put different-sized holes over the opening, pressed down on the handle, and out came a long slender snake of Play-Doh? This is how synthetic fibers are made. Then these tiny strands of plastic are woven or knit into fabric. It’s plastic fabric.

Synthetics go by lots of names: acetate, acrylic, modacrylic, nylon, olefin, polyester, and the latest, microfiber. The demand for synthetic fiber, especially polyester, has doubled in the last fifteen years. Why is this bad? An article in Environmental Health Perspectives spells it out:

The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of crude oil and releasing emissions including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, all of which can cause or aggravate respiratory disease. Volatile monomers, solvents and other by-products of polyester production are emitted in the wastewater. The EPA, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, considers many textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators.

Although the idea that we’re using valuable resources to make new plastic fiber still strikes me as wrong, there might be a place for synthetic clothing made from recycled plastic. I could live with this, and some companies are doing this. However, 70 percent of America’s plastic water bottles still aren’t recycled (I should probably take a wee bit of responsibility for this), so we have lots of room for improvement. And if we can create plastic clothes out of oil, can’t we figure out how to replace these fabrics by expanding the list of uses for wool? Lightweight shirts, lightweight jackets, polo shirts, vests, sweatshirts—they could all be made of wool. If we can put humans on the moon and land little rovers on Mars and photograph the rings of Saturn, you’d think we could come up with more environmentally friendly clothing.

Polartec is finally catching on to the wonders of wool. According to a Sheep Industry News article, the company is creating a product that is 44 percent wool, and the wool is 100 percent American raised. Said a representative of Polartec, “We just really like the U.S. wool story.”

And what about comfortable wool undies? Why don’t we give them a try? I finally mention this to Melissa, who looks at her crazy wife and says, “You first.”

I think it’s such a great idea. Do we really need oil-based synthetic underwear? Or cotton underwear? The earth “created” oil millions of years ago, but oil is not renewable. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Cotton is a renewable resource, but current production methods harm the planet. Yet with a little help from sheep, we could make wool underwear forever, and without high chemical or pesticide use.

I know the world isn’t so black and white that it comes down to people choosing among cotton, plastic, and wool. We’ll all likely continue wearing cotton and plastic, but if we can replace those fabrics with wool, it seems the planet-friendly thing to do.

I’m finding wool so inspiring that it occurs to me: Perhaps I should give those compact fluorescent light bulbs another try.