About Cotton Sustainability

• Overview
• Responsible Economic Development
• U.S. Cotton
• Cotton vs. Other Fibers
• Manufacturing
• Recycling
• Ask the Sustainability Desk

Responsible Economic Development

The cotton plant yields an astonishing array of renewable products. It clothes us, insulates our homes, feeds our animals with protein-rich animal feeds; feeds humans with versatile cottonseed oil, and it provides mulch and biomass for energy. Not far down the road, the cottonseed itself will become an important food source for people.

Cotton is the best-selling natural fiber in America today, supplying the global demand now and far into the future for textiles and a wide range of other products. A truly global industry, cotton growing, processing and manufacturing holds a key position in the economies of some 80 countries.

The cotton industry exemplifies and verifies a crucial principle for our times: sustainability must also mean profitability. As this honored plant accomplishes more and more for people around the world environmentally, steadily increasing its productivity and reducing its environmental impacts, it also has been a dependable driver of economic development around the world.

Even with all the diversity in the countries and cultures that have been home to cotton and its related industries, the people of the cotton industry have something in common. All of us share a special reverence for this amazingly useful, economically beneficial gift from nature as we together travel the road to full sustainability.