What is GOTS and why choose organic cotton baby and soft toys?

You may have heard of organic cotton, but have you heard of the term GOTS? Wonder how is GOTS related to organic cotton? And why is it important for our planet? We would like to give you some insights on what GOTS stands for, how it is to be certified as GOTS textile, and why we should choose organic cotton for our baby products, and baby and soft toys.

What is GOTS? What does GOTS stand for?

GOTS stands for GLOBAL ORGANIC TEXTILE STANDARD. The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) is a leading textile producing and processing standard for organic fibres.  

The aim of GOTS is to set a globally recognised set of requirements and standards for the textile farming and manufacturing industries to follow, in order to give our end consumers a seal of assurance that the products come from textiles that are environmentally friendly and organic from its harvesting to the manufacturing process. 

A set of compulsory Global Standard “covers the processing, manufacturing, packaging, labelling, trading, and distribution of all textiles made from at least 70% certified organic natural fibres.” (see GOTS website)

GOTS lays out a detailed description of how a company can apply for GOTS certification on their website. And their latest version of the standard can also be found on their website. 

Why is Organic Cotton better? Does organic cotton make a difference?

So, GOTS is a body that certifies the use of organic cotton. Why is organic cotton better than conventional cotton? To answer this question, we need to understand the production and farming process of conventional cotton. 

Conventional cotton is believed to consume 16% up to 25% of the world's insecticides and requires $2 Billion (10%) in pesticides each year in just ONE CROP. We probably already know, pesticides and insecticides, in general, contaminate the soil we use to grow crops, even the air we breathe and the water we drink. Imagine not just to us, but to the wildlife it has impacted on with contaminated water and air. It has been reported that the residue comes from pesticide has been increasingly discovered in foods, farm animals, and even breast milk. These are chemicals that are responsible for our deadly illness - cancer, and imagine the harm it can do to our young children for their neurodevelopment. effects (Refer to this blog post and this article).

So how does organic cotton make a difference, you may ask. Textile Exchange created an in-depth report about the impact our conventional cotton has been making to the world and comparing that to the organic cotton production process. As seen from the figure below, to create a t-shirt, it requires 2,168 gallons (over 8,000 litre) of water with the use of conventional cotton, and 9,910 gallons (over 36,000 litre) of water to create a pair of jeans. Look at the difference using organic cotton makes. Only 186 and 932 gallons of water is required to make a t-shirt and pair of jeans respectively with the use of organic cotton. 

Figure from Textile Exchange Report 

 

According to Textile Exchange's chart below, the use of organic cotton alone has this level of climate change-related impact saving. This includes saving 87,201 Olympic sized pools worth of water being used in the garment production process, and 549,314 years of 60 watt light bulb life. More amazing, it has saved 92.5m Kg CO2 emissions that would take us driving around the world 13,572 times! So, what is not for us to support when we consider all of the harmful consequences our love for conventional cotton could cause our next generations, our children, and their children? 

Figure from Textile Exchange

How to source organic cotton baby products

It is absolutely not difficult to find baby and children products that are made of organic cotton. Simply do a google search and we bet you would be able to find plenty of choices. Some do worry if organic cotton is more expensive, and the answer is, in general, yes. However, it wouldn’t be that much more expensive than conventional cotton products if you select carefully. 

You may also notice some GOTS certified organic cotton baby and children toys and products are more expensive than normal organic cotton, due to the fact that it is certified by the worldwide organic textile standard officially from GOTS.

Nevertheless, the price difference between the organic and conventional cotton products, probably is much less of a worry, when you have read through and thought through what we said above regarding the environmental impact does the conventional cotton make to our planet. Organic cotton produces around 46% less CO2 emission compared to conventional cotton. In the age of us starting to opt for electronic and hybrid car and cities and countries are aiming for 0 CO2 emission level in the short future, we should certainly do our small part to help the environment, and this will only benefit your future generations to come for your family as well. 

 

Final Words

In this article, we have explained in detail what the term GOTS stands for, and what GOTS does to our textile industry. By using organic cotton, whether they are GOTS certified or not, is certainly the first step into a cleaner environment for our future generations. We slowly see more and more toy manufacturers are opting for GOTS certified textile to produce cotton-based products and clothes. The more we support these products, the more affordable in the future it will become, and the less conventional cotton would be farmed and produced due to decreasing demand. Let’s do our small part to help the environment, first by urging ourselves to select environmentally-friendly textiles and materials when choosing toys and products for our babies. 

Now, have you heard of the term OEKO TEX? Wonder what it means? It is often talked about with GOTS. We certainly have just an article for you to understand what Oeko Tex is here in our blog. We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. 

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