Is your T-shirt organic? And if not, should you care? 

Organic veggies, organic cookies, do you really need organic tee shirts, jeans or bed sheets?

It is because you can spare our planet pounds of chemicals, avoid toxins for yourself and push the karma of this unbalanced world an inch in a better direction. An inch is an inch...

    The lack of sustainable agriculture harms significantly our environment. Cotton is one of the most polluted crops on earth, perhaps due to a wrong perception as a non-food crop, causing a significant risk to our freshwater.

Picture these numbers: cotton uses 24% of the global insecticides market but    at the same time, its acreage amounts to only 2.4% of the world's cultivated land.

Well... It is obvious that the pesticide use for cotton way too much, and on top of that, all nine pesticides used on cotton in the U.S. are classified by the U.S. EPA as Category I and II- the most dangerous chemicals.

     What does this mean for You? If you love wearing your favorite T-shirt and pair of jeans, as we do, you have to live with the fact that it took a lot of chemicals, many of them carcinogenic (cancer creating) to create them.

• To "solve" the problem, a recent wave of Genetically Modified cotton has became widespread, making up 43 percent of the world's cotton. Bear with us, it sounds technical but it's worth to get it - GMO cotton is modified to tolerate the application of glyphosate (an active ingredient in commercial herbicides), so this herbicide can be applied freely without destroying the plant.

• Glyphosate causes a range of cell mutations, damage to cell DNA and cancer.  The residues of glyphosate have been found in a variety of fruits and vegetables and since it is inside the plant tissues, it CAN NOT be washed off. "Extremely persistent under typical application conditions" says report from The US Environmental Protection Agency. An additional concern related to using glyphosate on cotton is that the herbicide has been shown to move from cotton fabric into and through human skin. 

  We think, that you do know the answer. The solution is NOT a better pesticide and GMO plants, but crops without poisons and chemicals. Organic production that maintains and regenerates soil fertility without the persistent use of chemicals, toxins, pesticides, fertilizers or GM seeds or sprays. That is not enough, though. Processing of fibers has to be a systems that breaks down the fibers without harsh chemicals, for example utilizing enzymes instead of formaldehyde and similar toxins.

      Goodbye, wrinkle free shirts! Hello: hemp and linen, bamboo and soy fabrics! They are sustainable and have fibers with great qualities: breathable, some, like hemp naturally deter bacteria (and so body odor - hello: socks and T-shirts!), very durable. Bamboo and soy blends are incredibly soft and pleasant to the skin. The tubular structure of hemp and bamboo allows them to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

    Most importantly, they are safe for the skin, your body largest organ. Personally, we investigated for years possible causes of skin and health problems for our children and ourselves. We don't make any health claims, but for our family changes like moving to rural area, growing organics and wearing organic clothing, definitely work. We also love helping others to understand and access more choices as well.

  Alina and Bob, owners

Sources:

* Report "The Impact of Cotton on Fresh Water Resources and Ecosystems", prepared for WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature by J. Soth, Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency, Hamburg (Germany), and C. Grasser and R. Salerno, Kiefer & Partners AG, Management Consultants for Energy and Environment, Zurich (Switzerland). Toxicity data on cotton pesticides (Appendix 4) were compiled by Philipp Thalmann, Kueng-Biotech and Environment, Bern, Switzerland, and added to the report in April 2000.  http://www.panda.org

* GNO Compass, http://www.gmo-compass.org

* The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 OXR, tel. [44 20 8452 2729] [44 20 7272 5636]. General Enquiries sam@i-sis.org.uk - Website/Mailing List, press-release@i-sis.org.uk - ISIS Director m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk

* Organic Consumers Associations,  http://www.organicconsumers.org

  Do your plans and goals become reality?  

The end of December has a special value for me which no other month can offer. It provides a neat, convenient closure to any failed ideas and actions, failed (for mysterious reasons...) or I plain not pushed through. It also closes the accomplishments and lucky strikes. It  stares you in a face and asks "OK, so what is next?"

Happiness probably is just that: striving and pushing forward. As an architect at heart, I do like planning. Planning is bit like dreaming, you can picture whatever you want and nobody can say "Hey, does this make sense?" Who cares! You don't have to show it or explain it. It's for You.

There are few pitfalls, where plans did not breath much life past conception.

First: your dreams/plans don't have to be spoken but they have to start their existence in the outside world somehow, even if on a paper napkin. They have to be written down or sketched or painted.  Second: once you put a few of your favorite goals or ideas, look across ALL the areas of your life and picture each: "What do I want this area to look like?" For example, if I want my business to grow and plan extra effort there, what about my family in a meantime? What about Tai Chi Cha classes or spiritual enlightenment?  What about the old barn, my plan of herd of goats or gardening?

 To me, that's where the plain dreaming morphs into actual planning, when you start to actually fit it together. Or see how it doesn't fit. Don't cross anything out but... If you cannot imagine yourself with your dreams painted in a picture, if you have to paint several different "you" in different pictures, this calls for inspection. There is one You. If you plan double life bouncing in opposite directions at once, that's what you'll get. You wouldn't get very far driving a car like that... For me - there are usually quite few things I want but they stick out like sore thumb out from the rest. Well, the trip to Peru will wait till 2011 but the Tai Chi Cha will work well in a barn with goats picking on the hemp pants. The last thing left to be done is to sketch rough gradient phases leading to end year goal. It can be calendar quarters, seasons - simple concepts of your goals in time and space.

 Most important - have fun. It's your plan, it's your goal, don't give it away! Then it will happen.

 Happy New Year 2009!

  Alina and Bob, owners