Wearing a White Hat: Time to Rally the Troops
January 5, 2012 Has the battle between good and evil ever been as apparent and obvious as the one that’s been going on for decades between cotton and synthetic fibers? Consider these obvious facts:
- Cotton is a product of nature, whereas synthetics are … well, synthetic.
- Cotton comes from the earth, while synthetics are made from oil.
- If we run out of cotton, we can grow more during the next season.If we run out of oil, we will need to wait a few million seasons for it to be replenished.
Of course, in this showdown, cotton is the good guy in the white hat, while synthetics are the villain with a long, drooping mustache and a black mask. Admittedly, I am a little biased in this discussion, given my role as chief editor of Cotton International. But at this point, there are two other important questions we need to ask:
- Is this even a war that cotton can win in the long run? After all, the fiber has been losing market share for many years, even though overall consumption continues to rise.
- Which is the more dangerous enemy to cotton right now: synthetics … or cotton?
If that second question makes you scratch your head, don’t worry: It makes a lot of people in the industry scratch their heads, too. How can cotton be its own worst enemy?
Sibling Rivalries
For the most part, it happens when one “type” of cotton denigrates another “type” of cotton as somehow being inferior. Out of curiosity, I typed “cotton is bad” into a search engine and the very first result that turned up was a Web site named, ironically, www.business-ethics.com.
Citing The Organic Trade Association, a nonprofit trade group representing the U.S. organic cotton industry, the site refers to cotton as “the world’s dirtiest crop.” Another site promoting Fairtrade cotton tells the story of a man who, when selling conventional cotton, could only afford to send his son to school. When he began growing Fairtrade instead, his income increased enough to send all of his children to school.
I realize there is merit to those claims. Cotton does require significant amounts of water, pesticides and fertilizers, which can be detrimental to the environment. We’re working to lessen that impact every day. I also realize that we must find ways to address the crushing poverty so many growers in developing countries suffer from. I am not even remotely smart enough to know what the answers to those problems are.
But I do know that this pseudo-infighting benefits only the makers of synthetic fibers.
We all want cotton to be grown more efficiently, have a smaller environmental footprint, generate more fiber, and feed more people, but there’s no single type that can do it all. So, the negative commentary that occurs among members of the cotton community needs to stop.
There are plenty of wonderful stories to tell about the benefits of cotton, and massive volumes of that information can be found in international, domestic and local associations.
With the recent release of the Cotton Life Cycle Assessment produced by Cotton Incorporated, the National Cotton Council, and Cotton Council International, there is now a wealth of concrete, factual information about the strides cotton is making to minimize its environmental impact. It is an extremely powerful tool that took years to develop, so let’s get our collective act together and make use of it.
Cotton has been losing market share to synthetics for decades now. There’s no need for the cotton family members to cut each other to pieces and serve it to them on a silver platter.
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