Green Cotton

Most natural textiles – cotton, wool, linen, tencel, bamboo – are naturally cream or pale brown. Almost universally these fabrics are bleached before dyeing.

Natural shades of textiles vary, and starting the dye process with a white fabric enables the factory to anticipate the final color more precisely.

So honestly, how safe and environmentally friendly is it to bleach fabrics?

You know that bottle of bleach in your laundry room? The one with the safety cap, the warnings not to drink it or let children handle it or inhale the fumes or mix it with anything lest it go bang? That’s the exact same product that textiles are bleached with. And, often discharged into rivers.

The most widely used industrial bleaches are chlorine compounds, usually sodium hypochlorite – household bleach - or chlorine dioxide. Both are hazardous to factory workers, who are at risk of burns, lung and eye injuries.

So how do industrial bleaches affect the environment?

Sodium hypochlorite oxidizes organic matter in rivers and oceans to produce chemicals called trihalomethanes,  some of which are carcinogenic.

Chlorine dioxide also produces trihalomethanes in waterways. It also can form dioxins – carcinogens, mutagens, and tetrogenic compounds - which the body stores in fatty tissues almost indefinitely.

Bleaching also consumes large amounts of natural resources; primarily vast quantities of water used to rinse the fabric after bleaching, otherwise any residual bleach would weaken the fibers.

What are the alternatives to bleach ?

Unbleached fabrics clearly have an environmental advantage. Here’s a skater t-shirt for dudes,  and if I was four, I’d have a tantrum for this gorgeous little dress.

For other colors – and particularly for white and pale colors, such as achieving perfectly white jeans, or a pure white wedding dress, require the use of bleach.

Less environmentally damaging solutions to bleaching are the use of either hydrogen peroxide or ozone bleach. Both are chlorine-free, fairly benign chemical processes which produce no dioxins or trihalomethanes, and use less energy and water than chlorine-based bleach.

According to an ozone bleach promotional website, chlorine bleaching requires 8.28MJ of energy, and emits 800g of CO₂ to whiten 1kg of cotton yarn.

To bleach the same amount of cotton with ozone bleach would require 60% less energy and produce half the CO₂ emissions.

Ozone breaks down into pure oxygen as it bleaches, with no other by-products. But it’s hard to use, and factories must invest in new bleaching machinery to use ozone. Some factories are beginning to use ozone bleach in conjunction with chlorine bleach to reduce the quantity of chlorine bleach used – a step in the right direction.

Hydrogen peroxide has a similarly low environmental impact, as it breaks down into water and oxygen as it bleaches. It’s also easier to use, and products bleached with hydrogen peroxide are on our shelves (or our virtual shelves). Loop’s organic cotton towels and bedding are bleached with hydrogen peroxide, and ROMP’s organic white cotton shirts printed with French song lyrics are too.

Could Chlorine Bleaching Be Eliminated From the Textile Industry?

Chlorine bleaching currently dominates the textile industry but existing alternative technologies exist that can be used reasonably easily and cheaply, and have much lower environmental impact. Bleach pollution is a major problem, but it is one with a solution, and it’s possible that one day it will be history.

And for brides to be: yes! you can buy a wedding dress with without bleach. Olivia Luca’s wedding dresses made from unbleached fair trade handwoven silk shantung are elegant and eco-friendly.

Photo source above: Flickr

Photosource: designspongeonline.com

By Erin Dale

My mother recently replaced her shower curtain. I caught her carting the old one toward the trash. “Wait!” I cried. “Can’t you at least recycle that thing?” Shrugging, she said, “I doubt it, but it’s disgusting and needs to go.” I cringed. It’s going, all right… to its new home, the landfill. “I hope you at least replace it with a fabric one,” I said. “Oh, I already replaced it. I just bought the same thing again.” Livid, I groaned “Mom, I wish you’d talked to me first!”

Is a shower curtain really worth obsessing over? Consider this: most shower curtains are made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC), one of the nastiest of all consumer plastics. Producing it is energy-intensive, and the manufacturing releases carcinogenic dioxins and other harmful chemicals into the atmosphere. According to Christie Matheson in “Green Chic,” “About seven billion pounds of PVC are discarded annually in the United States and most recycling facilities won’t accept it, because recycling it is highly labor-intensive and potentially hazardous.” My town’s facility won’t take PVC; I checked.

So now my family has a brand new, perfectly smelly PVC shower curtain that will also get nasty and need to be tossed, and get even worse when it winds up in a landfill, leaching its harmful chemicals back into the ground… just like the last shower curtain, and all the others that have been innocently replaced over the years (see typical landfull below).

Florida landfill featuring plastics….photosource: static.flickr.com

The simple solution would have been to find an eco-friendly shower curtain, as there are plenty of options out there. However, this seemed too daunting for my mom. For some quick shopping tips, I found organic hemp shower curtains at rawganique.com.

According to this site, hemp is a durable and naturally antifungal and antibacterial materials for curtains. I’ve owned a few hemp products over the years (not a shower curtain, yet), and my only complaint is that the material tends to get ratty. I wonder how long it would take before I’d need to replace a hemp shower curtain? The good news is that, when I do need a new one, hemp is biodegradable.

Something less labor-intensive, perhaps, would be a curtain made from organic cotton. Cotton may not be as strong as hemp, but I’m sure it would wash a little easier (and it’s also biodegradable). Pristineplanet.com has a decent selection of organic cotton and hemp shower curtains, starting at $26 (nice) and going up to $139 (yikes!).

Matheson recommends gaiam.com for linen shower curtains. This would have to be my favorite choice; linen is always classy and gorgeous, and the site promises the curtain will last through many washings (for $59, one would hope so!). Linen is also more mildew-resistant than cotton.

For something tough that may never need replacing, try curtains made from pack cloth, a urethane-coated nylon fabric. Nylon, like PVC, has an energy-intensive manufacturing, but it will outlast a PVC curtain. Satara-inc.com boasts, “It may be the last shower curtain you ever own!” Theirs retails for $50, so purchasing one will definitely save money over the years; however, these are less attractive than the more pricey curtains made from organic fabrics.

You’ll notice, in general, that these sustainable curtains are far costlier than PVC choices, but PVC is costlier when it comes to your – and the planet’s – health. And don’t forget the perk of owning a fabric shower curtain— no more plastic-y smell! If you, too, already have a PVC shower curtain, don’t run out and replace it with an organic one. Use what you have (as long as you can stand the fumes!). Then decide on a product that’s worth it.

What do you think? Have you tried an organic or eco-friendly shower curtain?

What was the result? Does your town recylce PVCs? Let us know greencottonblog@gmail.com