:: Cotton

Key environmental impacts of the cultivation of cotton include:

• Impacts of industrial scale cotton growing such as reduced soil fertility, soil salinisation, loss of biodiversity and water pollution etc.

• Massive pesticide use on the cotton crop causing problems to land, animals and severe health problems in humans arising from exposure to acutely toxic pesticides.

•The most widely used groups of pesticides on cotton are insecticides and have been classified by the World Health Organisation as 'moderately hazardous'. However, some insecticides that are widely used, especially in developing countries, are classified as 'highly hazardous’; these are generally acutely toxic and are nerve poisons.

•Cotton fibre production also requires large quantities of fungicides, herbicides and defoliants. Large amounts of synthetic fertilisers (often based on nitrogen compounds) are also used and can result in nitrate contamination to water. Fertiliser pollution of water can cause accelerated growth of aquatic plants and algae. Such accelerated growth (eutrophication) can deoxygenate the water to a state in which it cannot support animal life.

• Major water consumption in crop cultivation, ranging from 29000 litres in Sudan to 7000 litres in Israel per kg of cotton fibre (approx 2 pair of trousers).

<<Back to ECOTEXTILES