Ecological Footprint
Cotton covers 55% of the world's cultivated land yet uses 75% of the world's insecticides, more than any other single major crop. Other environmental consequences of the elevated use of chemicals in the non organic cotton growing methods consist of:
- High levels of agrochemicals are used in the production of non-organic, conventional cotton. Cotton production uses more chemicals per unit area than any other crop and accounts in total for 10-16% of the world's pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, and defoliants).
- Chemicals used in the processing of cotton pollute the air and surface waters.
- Residual chemicals may irritate consumers' skin.
- Decreased biodiversity and shifting equilibrium of ecosystems due to the use of pesticides.
Read more about this topic: Organic Cotton
Famous quotes containing the words ecological and/or footprint:
“The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the, if you will, ecological chain of breathing, growing, and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.”
—Midge Decter (b. 1927)
“We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.”
—Arthur S. Eddington (1882–1944)