Our organic cotton t-shirts

T-shirt production

The t-shirts are being produced in workshops which all correspond to the fair trade criteria. They are in India in the Gujarat region north of Bombay. They have all been certified by an individual Dutch organisation. The main goal of CONTROL UNION is to guarantee that no products used in the company are harmful for the environment. The dye corresponds to the latest strict demands of the international GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standards) specifications.

The use of organic cotton gives:

...more comfort for the consumer:

• Omitting chemical products when extracting the cotton, increases the quality of the end product and therefore guarantees a pleasant wear (better for the skin).
• Even more so, they are also suitable for people suffering from allergies.

... advantage to those who cultivate the cotton:

• Avoiding the contact with chemical products, improves the farmers health (no more breathing problems and allergies).
• Lowering of the indebtedness of the small farmers which were created in order to buy pesticides which enables them to produce their own fertilizer.

... protection for the environment:

• By permanently changing the cultivated fields the earth quality improves which will therefore decrease potential illnesses.
• This enables the ground to recover much quicker and does no longer get worn our by using pesticides and OGM.
• By omitting chemical products, this type of cultivation protects the environment and the water consumption gets reduced by half.
• The fact that no OGM seeds are beeing used, the traditional abundance of cotton seeds species are being kept.

The conventional cotton cultivation is one of the, most polluting type of cultivations worldwide for the environment and often doesn't occupy work capacities. It causes serious diseases by using chemical products and also leads small farmers into debt:

• The cotton cultivation takes up 2,4% of the agricultural surface worldwide and uses 24% pesticides, which are sold worldwide (Source: WHO).
  
  
• The numerous pesticides used for cultivating cotton, belong to the category "dangerous substance" and are forbidden according to the World Health Organization (WHO). According to WHO, 1 million people have been poisened by these pesticides and 22 000 people even die due to this type of cultivation.
  
  
• The artificial irrigation of the conventional cotton cultivation uses up more than 2/3 of the drinking water resources worldwide. Approximately 5263 litres of water are necessary to produce 1kg of cotton. (Source: CNRS)
  
  
• The usage of pesticides and fertilizer adds up to 40% of the production costs of the conventional cultivation (Source: Conseil Consultatif International sur le Coton).
  
  
• The cultivation of the cotton all around the Aral lake (central Asia) has immensely, and in an irrevocable way, destroyed the ecosystem of the region. The Aral lake has dropped by half, the water is polluted and the salt level has increased. This leads to the consequences that there is no longer any life in the water and the surrounded ground can no longer be cultivated. (Source: UNESCO)