Herbal Fab: Impacting Nature and Communities with Organic Cotton Farming
Cotton is the most important natural fibre, accounting for a quarter of global fibre demand — a tenfold increase from 1950 to 2017 (Textile Exchange, 2018). It is estimated that conventional cotton (which is grown in intensively farmed, unsustainable monocultures around the globe) replaced with its organic alternative can save 62% of the primary energy demand (aboutorganiccotton.org), and organically grown cotton has approximately half the environmental impact of its conventional counterpart.
Herbal Fab, our latest featured supplier on our Future Fabrics Expo platform, is a GOTS certified company that specialises in organic cotton fabrics, amongst other sustainable fibres in their range. We asked Herbal Fab, about what sustainable actions they’re taking to lower their environmental impact, and how organic cotton plays a positive role in the future.
1. Can you provide a brief outline about the products Herbal Fab creates, and what key aspects make them more sustainable?
We are a GOTS certified company offering an extensive range of organic cotton wovens and knits, which is our core fabric. We offer a range of weights (GSM s) and weaves catering to all applications – clothing, home furnishing, accessories etc and a great selection of other sustainable fabrics like linen, TENCEL™, Lenzing Modal, bemberg, peace silk, hemp and more.
We ensure that origins of all our fabrics are sustainable, we do not partner with anyone who is not comfortable sharing details of their fibre provenance. We are always looking to add new sustainable fabrics to our fabric library.
We also offer sustainable Garment Manufacturing solutions and have a GOTS certified set up specialising in organic cotton knit clothing, particularly for baby clothing. We also have launched our own sewing set up too where we aim to keep utmost transparency and work hard to make a change in lives of the people working under us.
2. How does organic cotton play a part in the future landscape of materials?
Organic cotton is cotton that is produced and certified according to the guidelines and standards of organic farming. The cultivation of organic cotton promotes/maintains ecosystem diversity by preserving the health of soils, nature and humans. For organic cotton, artificial fertilisers and pesticides are replaced by natural means and sustainable methods. The use of toxic chemicals and genetically modified seeds are prohibited.
Organic farming has lots of advantages:
- Reduces Ecological Footprint: Over the years, the use of GMO seeds, pesticides, chemical fertilizers have degraded the soil fertility. As soil health weakens, farmers become dependent on these expensive farm inputs, which further puts them into a spiral of debts…one of the major reasons for suicides amongst farmers.
- Better working conditions of farmers and their families: They are not exposed to harmful chemicals in the fields, food or water supply. In producer groups, they organize and support each other.
- Less Water Consumption: Organic cotton, irrespective of conventional cotton, is irrigated by up to 80% with rainwater. In addition, the groundwater remains clean through the consistent avoidance of harmful substances.
3. What dyes are you using to colour your materials?
We apply GOTS certified low impact dyes onto the majority of our fabrics (organic cotton woven and knit fabric range) but also offer natural dyeing for woven fabrics and preferably lighter GSM fabrics ranging (60-120 GSM).
4. How can fashion have a positive impact on nature and communities?
Fashion has a great role to play, especially when witnessing where the world is going in terms of climatic change. Fashion production contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams. What’s more, 85% of all textiles go to landfills each year. … Clothing production has roughly doubled since 2000. The fashion industry has a disastrous impact on the environment, and the environmental damage is increasing as the industry grows.
However, there are solutions and alternatives to mitigate these problems. The first step lies in building awareness and willingness to change amongst our industry and consumers.
We are greatly inspired by Fashion Revolution, and we believe a greater respect, recognition and transparency is needed for everyone involved in each level of the supply chain, to avoid another Rana Plaza event happening. Beyond suppliers, the mentality of end consumers and their purchasing habits also need to shift.
We understand that organic cotton may seem too expensive — but you are investing in water conservation, clean air, healthy soil and a fairer life for the farmers. When you measure against those benefits collectively, the price is not that high anymore. A greater demand in organic cotton can help regulate price in the coming years.
5. What are your goals and plans moving forward?
“There will be nothing left for the generations to come if we are not sustainable in what we do and a simple rule to be sustainable is to give back to nature what you take from it in the same form; if that is not possible then it needs to be in a form that is still useful or at least not harmful.” There are a few core issues within our focus which we aim to address in the coming years:
- The issue of high MOQs
We believe that designers, small scale brands and startups want to contribute towards the sustainability of natural resources, but high MOQs (Minimum Order Quantities) amongst other difficulties are limiting them. We aim to reach as many such individuals/companies as possible, by supporting every kind of order size and quantity so they can meet their design and production needs. Then, the day won’t be far when organic/sustainable textiles/clothing will no longer be a niche.
We have been working on this for almost 1.5 years now and try to stock basic fabrics at our risk to support this. However, we would rather do so than promote lower grade quality in name of organic cotton/other sustainable fabrics.
One of the challenges of doing smaller quantities is that we also have to work with bigger mills to maintain quality. But we hope to continue supporting small businesses through our new sewing set up in the near future.
- THE STATE OF COTTON FARMERS
Hearing a lot about the tragic state of farmers and their rates of suicides made us more curious as to what is actually going at the ground level. Our major point of concerns here are:
Firstly, BT cotton has damaged the Industry by converting the majority of the farmers who were originally doing organic cotton farming. Though it initially increased the yield, the constant use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers caused soil fertility to degrade year on year.
Secondly, with pests developing resistance year on year, farmers used stronger and a greater quantity of pesticides, thereby degrading the soil quality, degrading their personal health, increasing their farm input cost, and ultimately putting them under spiral of debt, leading to suicides.
Thirdly, indigenous varieties of seeds are almost disappearing. It is said that only 1-2 % of cotton farming is under indigenous varieties and those which are not supported will become lost. Indigenous varieties are also known as “Desi variety” — born in nature without any external human interventions, they are reusable and by default do not require chemical fertilisers and pesticides to grow. These varieties are mostly rainfed and do not require an irrigation system, which greatly reduces the consumption of water needed to grow cotton.
Cotton farming is not profitable or favourable to farmers in the current scenario. We really believe farmers should get more respect world over. With that in mind, we are working on the following:
- Deeper traceability up till the end farmer, particularly on our existing GOTS certified fabrics. We hope we can being a change by giving the farmers extra premium for organic cotton.
- Promoting indigenous variety of cotton as we think they have the lowest environmental impact. There are lots of technical challenges in converting them to a suitable yarn quality as needed for one’s end product/application.
Discover Herbal Fab on the Future Fabrics Virtual Expo, which will be free to access between 1st July-8th July during Future Fabrics Virtual Expo LIVE week.
Catch our conversation with Herbal Fab on 3rd July, 2020, 12:00 PM BST on Instagram LIVE. For more events, register here.
