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:
“Could it not be that just at the moment masculinity has brought us to the brink of nuclear destruction or ecological suicide, women are beginning to rise in response to the Mother’s call to save her planet and create instead the next stage of evolution? Can our revolution mean anything else than the reversion of social and economic control to Her representatives among Womankind, and the resumption of Her worship on the face of the Earth? Do we dare demand less?”
—Jane Alpert (b. 1947)
“An oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see the nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun dead leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)