buy more organic cotton rather than conventional cotton

here’s that delivery record for my bathrobe…

That bathrobe of mine [the one I ordered in March…] finally showed up! I went over to my other house over the weekend to collect the mail and lo and behold, there was a package slip for “Caneda”. The box was really beat up and I had no idea what would be in it. It’s a great heavy bathrobe, even if it sat around somewhere for 6 months.

The next big organic purchase I have to make is new sheets for our house. Some of mine have gone from white to, well, not white. Ugh. I’ve also been buying organic cotton t-shirts when I get the chance. They really aren’t out in stores, but I can find them online when I look.

I rarely buy clothes, so my progress on this goal is pretty slow. It’s more a reminder than a thing I’m actively working for. So far I’ve bought a handful of tshirts online and one in person. I actually ordered a pair of pants, although they were far too skinny for me and were really, hilariously never going to button even though they were supposedly for someone with my measurements. I’ve also ordered a cardigan, since they’re a little over zealous with the air conditioning at work.

One of these days, I’d like to replace all of our sheets. Mine are looking a little tattered and worn out, but we haven’t decorated our bedroom at all. I also tried to buy a bathrobe a while back but was thwarted by Canada Post, who failed to actually deliver it to my house.

It definitely takes more effort to find organic cotton clothes, and only a handful are things that I’d like to wear or come in the right size, etc. I found myself wishing the other day that you could add in things like organic cotton or fair trade/non-sweatshop labor just the way you add salt to a dish. I guess that’s what buying offsets is like, but I wish it were just that easy, that everything came with that as an option or maybe that I could go into a store and know that everything would fit, look good and not destroy something I prize.

I’ve decided to update my environmental goal to buying more organic cotton. I’ve been casually doing this lately, but I decided that I should do it in earnest when I learned that 25% of the pesticides and fertilizers in the US go to cotton! 25%! I need to double check that number, but I’ve always known that cotton is a dirty crop. My mom and her sisters remember picking cotton as a summer job, and my aunt remembers when they would drop Agent Orange on the fields because she was so impressed with how good it was as a defoliator. It’s tough to buy organic cotton clothes, but I just need to learn how. It’s not like I buy many clothes anyway, so if I have to spend a little more time and money to get them, that’s fine with me.