About Cotton Sustainability

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

Recycling

Cotton provides cool and comfortable clothing, other textiles, animal feed, cottonseed oil, biomass fuels, and numerous other products. It’s a resource that is natural, renewable - and recyclable.

A Cotton Incorporated program that demonstrated cotton’s inherent recyclability and positive environmental impact started in 2006 as part of COTTON'S DIRTY LAUNDRY TOUR® . The Dirty Laundry Tour, aimed at college campuses, is an exciting, interactive mobile marketing event for college students that fuses the social aspects of music, games, style and fashion with the many benefits of cotton.

The recycling component of the tour was named COTTON. FROM BLUE TO GREEN.™ and consisted of a grassroots campaign run by college students that educated students about denim and enlisted their help in collecting old denim clothes that would then be recycled into cotton insulation for houses.

In 2006, the COTTON. FROM BLUE TO GREEN.™ denim collection doubled initial expectations — a total of 14,566 denim pieces were collected nationwide. College students across the U.S. collected denim on their campuses and in their surrounding communities. To begin the manufacturing process of donated denim into natural cotton fiber insulation, the first step was to send all of the denim to Allan Company, a leader in the recycling industry since 1963. From there, it was baled into 1,000 lb. bales and then transported to JBM Fibers, a leading manufacturer of reprocessed fiber, processed the collected denim and returned the denim threads to their original fiber state, cotton, for the manufacturing of environmentally safe insulation through Bonded Logic Inc., the manufacturer of Ultra Touch™ natural cotton fiber insulation.

As a result of the 2006 COTTON. FROM BLUE TO GREEN.™ denim drive, and with help from Habitat for Humanity Baton Rouge, 12 new homes for families affected by Hurricane Katrina were built in the spring of 2007 from the ground up utilizing UltraTouch™ natural cotton fiber insulation.

In 2007, COTTON. FROM BLUE TO GREEN.™ visited five universities across the country (Illinois State University, Iowa State University, University of Delaware, University of Oregon and University of South Carolina). The program challenged students to spend the month of April collecting denim from their student population, as well as surrounding communities. The denim was collected and was converted into UltraTouch™ natural cotton fiber insulation.

Since that time, the program has partnered with the motion picture, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, to increase additional visibility and awareness of denim recycling.