A guide to the environmental impact of producing and processing some of the most common fabrics.

Linen

• Made from flax. By products include linseed oil and straw
• Flax needs few chemical fertilisers and less pesticides that other crops such as wheat and sugar beat
• Water retting was traditionally used to separate fibres from the plant but in Western Europe has now been replaced by dew retting, in which micro-organisms do the work, cutting down energy and water use
• Linen does not need sizing before spinning or weaving – also saving water and pollution
• However, linen does need more intensive bleaching than cotton and may include alkaline boiling, chlorite bleaching and peroxide bleaching
• Washing linen uses greater amounts of water

Cotton

• Occupies more that 5% of the world’s land (main producers are the US, China, former Soviet Union, India, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Egypt and Turkey).
• It accounts for 41.6% of all retail clothing sales
• It is one of the major users of pesticides, up to 25% of world sales, in Egypt more that 30,000 tonnes of pesticide are used every year
• It uses large amounts of water – 60% of the world crop needs irrigation. It can exhaust the soil unless rotated and pollute ground-water.
• Herbicides can be hazardous to health and the environment but yield can be cut by up to 32% by weeds
• Defoliants are often used to aid machine harvesting of crops
• Formaldehyde finishes are used against creasing
• Chlorine is used in bleaching
• Organic cotton is now available – weeds are extracted by geese and blocking plants are used to deter pests. It is hand-picked but yield is low
• Organic cotton is believed to account for just 300 tonnes out of an annual world production of 20 million tonnes
• Green cotton has not yet eliminated use of all fertilisers and insecticides but does not use defoliants for picking
• Coloured cotton is also being grown to avoid dyeing
• Some ecologists believe the future is not organic cotton but better pesticides or genetic manipulation of the plant to make it more resistant to disease and to improve yields