Sustainable Fabrics

Every fabric used in clothing has an impact on the environment but some do more harm than others.

As with most things in clothing manufacturing, it is not easy to understand which fabrics are better than others from a sustainability perspective. This is because the truth can be confronting and clothing brands would rather not talk about the impact their manufacturing has on the environment. Whilst there are many different fabrics used, we will focus our discussion on the common ones used in t-shirts. Greenchoices has a good article on fabrics and their environmental impacts.

Let’s start with the obvious bad offenders, which are synthetic fibres like polyester and nylon. Both these fabrics are made from petrochemicals, are non-biodegradable and take a lot of resources to manufacture. Further, washing these fabrics are a major way micro-plastics find their way into the ocean and food chain. We would recommend avoiding buying t-shirts made from these fabrics if you can!

When it comes to natural fibres, cotton is the most commonly used natural fabric. Whilst Cotton is a better choice given technology has improved to reduce the resources used in production, it still has the downside of being the most pesticide intensive crop in the world. More than 10% of all the pesticide and insecticide used in the world comes from cotton production. Cotton also needs to be dyed given its natural colour and often the dyes used are toxic. In some countries with poor environmental protection laws, these chemicals end up poisoning the water supply and impacting the health of people and animals. 

Organic cotton has an advantage over traditional cotton in that only natural pesticides and insecticides are used in production, which helps overcome one of the major issues of non-organic cotton. Then again organic cotton isn’t perfect either as it can require more land and water to produce the same yield as non-organic cotton. Also, organic cotton farmers can still use the same toxic dyes that non-organic farmers use. 

At Sharp Minds we have chosen to only use GOTS certified organic cotton, as this ensures that the organic cotton yarn is produced organically from seed to finished product. Out of all the fabric choices available, we believe GOTS certified organic cotton is the best choice, as it a natural fibre and significantly reduces the use of harsh chemicals in the production of the fabric.

Next time you buy a t-shirt, check out what it is made from and you might be surprised to see how many high end brands still use fabrics that are not sustainable. Even if they claim to use ‘organic’ fabrics then check to see if it is GOTS certified. If not then the organic fabric used might actually be worse for the environment than the non-organic fabric!

Check out our supply chain to see the steps we have taken to ensure our fabric choice is as sustainable as possible.