Shopping for back-to-school clothes, backpacks, tote bags, and other gear? Consider the positive environmental impact of buying organic. Concerned about off-gassing hazards from new fabrics? That’s yet another reason to consider organic fibers.

Increasingly, fiber and textile products made with certified organic cotton, wool, and other fibers are making their way inside natural products stores and onto the backs and into the homes of more and more consumers. Today you’ll find organic clothing, sheets, towels, bags, and hats for the whole family. For a list of suppliers, try The Organic Pages Online searchable directory: www.TheOrganicPages.com.

A Brief History
Like food, fabric begins on the farm. Ever since people have worn clothing, plants and animals have supplied its source. Small, slender fragments of many substances found in nature are called fibers. Plant fibers are made up of cellulose, and animal fibers are made up of protein.

The early hunter-gatherers used furs and skins for warmth and weaved reeds and grasses together for mats, baskets, and hats. Whole leaves like comfrey served to diaper babies. As humans became more agricultural, they began to raise animals and grow crops for fiber as well as for food.

Two hundred years ago in North America, farmwives wove homespun clothing from their own wool, flax, and other fibers. Later cotton took over and became the prevalent textile in the U.S. Farmwives spent less time weaving and more time shopping for calicos—unfortunately at the expense of the enslaved. This slave labor, the development of weaving machines, and the desire to mimic the fashions of Europe caused housewives to put their looms aside.

During the early 1800s, textile mills sprang up in the South and in New England. Locations were determined by access to swiftly moving streams or rivers, which would turn the water wheel that powered these mills. Between 1900 and 1903, manufacturers built some of the largest textile mills in the U.S. on the western side of Greenville County, South Carolina, known as the textile crescent, creating 40,000 jobs. As the 1900s progressed, the mills expanded and remained an important source of employment through most of the 1970s. But then foreign imports started to impact U.S. mills, forcing manufacturers to cut production and employment. The era of the textile crescent was over. More than 100 textile mills have closed in the last several decades, and today the United States imports 200 million garments a month at an average sale price 78 percent cheaper than domestically produced garments.

Fabrics for a New Age
Today, cotton is the most commonly produced natural fiber; its soft, flexible qualities make it a first choice for many garments, towels, and sheets. Unfortunately, conventional cotton cultivation is a highly toxic process that uses synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and chemical defoliants. Grown in the high elevations of the Southwest, “upland cotton” is the variety most conducive to organic production in this country. When the frost hits in the fall, the leaves naturally dry up and fall off the cotton plants, so there is no need for chemical defoliants. Organic cotton can be blended with wool, flax, or hemp to make an even wider variety of fabrics.

Bast (fruit and seed) fibers contribute to the production of clothing and domestic products, paper, and batting. Man-made fibers (often made from petroleum) have properties that try to simulate natural fibers. But in general, seed and fruit fibers are lighter, less expensive, and biodegradable, plus they’re easily renewable compared to synthetic fibers.

Soft, plant-based bast fibers include jute, flax, ramie, and hemp. It’s currently illegal to grow hemp in the U.S., so most of this fabric comes from Canada or Eastern Europe. Hemp is often blended with organic cotton to create a softer fabric with a better drape.

Jute is a lingocellulose fiber, composed partially of textile and partially of wood. Milkweed floss, also known as syriaca by Native Americans, is used to blend with goose down or synthetic fibers to make batting for such products as comforters, sleeping bags, and Arctic apparel; it requires little processing.

Flax has been used for centuries to weave linen. Two hundred years ago, it would take two to three acres of flax to clothe a family of six. This crop was planted in early spring and then cut down in late July. There are three steps in processing flax before it can be woven into fabric: retting (using dew or ponds to soften the stems), scutching (hammering or boiling to separate the fibers), then hackling (combing to align the fibers). Unlike cotton, flax is ideal for growing in cold-weather climates due to its short growing season. At one time, linen was often woven with wool and was known as linsey-woolsey.

A popular fiber in the U.S, bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world and can be grown without fertilizers or pesticides. According to the Federal Trade Commission, bamboo should be labeled "Rayon from Bamboo," as the process for producing bamboo is the same as the one used to produce viscose/rayon from other plants. The cellulose is extracted from the bamboo and then is mixed with toxic chemicals to convert the plant pulp into textile-quality fiber. This process pollutes unless carefully controlled with an effluent-treatment system. It is also possible to process bamboo using the scutching method described for flax to produce a strong, textured fabric similar to hemp.

Similar to the hackling of flax, the process of sheep shearing, scouring, and carding helps to align the fibers so they can be spun into yarn. In order for sheep, alpaca, rabbit or other animal wool, or hair, to be certified as organic, it must be produced in accordance with federal standards for organic livestock production.

Organic livestock production enables the farmer to control parasites, lice, and flies without toxic, persistent, synthetic chemicals. Permitted techniques include clean pasture management, good nutrition, vaccination, and the isolation of sick animals. The nutritional and behavioral effects of controlled organic grazing minimize stress on animals and keep immune systems functioning effectively. Third-party certification organizations verify that producers use only methods and materials allowed in organic production.

Fiber-Processing Standards
Crops grown for fiber must meet the same on-farm organic standards as food. All agricultural products labeled "organic" must come into compliance with the U.S. organic law, but the new Global Organic Textiles Standards (GOTS) will change the face of the organic fiber industry worldwide. It will give consumers a label that guarantees organic standards on the farm level as well as voluntarily organic-approved, less toxic substances for dying and finishing.
The scope of these standards is very broad—to define the production, processing, manufacturing, packaging, labeling, exportation, importation, and distribution of all natural fibers. The final products may include textile products, yarns, fabrics, and clothing.