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3 Reasons to Celebrate Cotton Today

3 Reasons to Celebrate Cotton Today

Posted on September 23, 2021

Celebrate World Cotton Day

October 7 is World Cotton Day, a global celebration promoting cotton and all its stakeholders in production, transformation, and trade while also highlighting the many technological advances and ongoing research related to cotton and cotton products.

World Cotton Day may only be one day a year, but cotton is worth celebrating year-round. Its multi-faceted nature makes it the ideal fiber for your supply chain. No matter what you create, the possibilities are endless when you use cotton.

In the spirit of the upcoming day, here are three facts about cotton that give us reason to celebrate October 7 and beyond!

Cotton can be versatile.

Cotton isn’t just for clothes.

Cotton’s soft, breathable nature makes it a consumer favorite when shopping for home textile products. Its thermo-regulating and hypoallergenic properties make it ideal for bedding while its odor resistance makes it ideal for towels.

Soft to the touch, cotton can also be used in hygiene products that are used against the skin such as diapers, baby wipes, feminine hygiene products, and more—allowing single-use cotton products to be designed for biodegradability.

Cotton can be circular.

Not only can Cotton be a sustainable and biodegradable fiber—it can also have a circular lifecycle with opportunities to reuse, recycle, and return to earth.

Well-made cotton apparel is durable, which means it can be reused again and again, opening doors to the secondhand market. Textiles made of 100% cotton can be recycled¹ and even used to create new products. For example, the Blue Jeans Go Green™ program collects denim (made from cotton) so that it can be recycled back to its natural fiber state and transformed into something new, like denim insulation. After cotton can no longer be reused or recycled, cotton products can be discarded, ultimately returning² to the earth during decomposition.

Cotton can be innovative.

From cotton fabric technologies to digital fabrics, next-level product innovation is possible with cotton. Performance applications like STORM COTTON™ and TransDRY® technologies push cotton to the top of the competitive market by combining cotton’s natural comfort with science, creating a garment that is both comfortable and practical in any adventure.

From physical technology to digital technology, Cotton Incorporated is continuing to make strides in the future of textiles with digital cotton fabrics. CottonWorks™ users are now able to take garment design to the next level through downloadable digital fabric files across a variety of constructions featured in the FABRICAST™ library.

Cotton for Good

Join us virtually on October 7 to celebrate World Cotton Day. This event will feature presentations from Bert Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of Life Is Good, and Maxine Bédat, director of New Standard Institute, with additional speakers from around the world.

Presentation times are on October 7, 2021, from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. ET and 12-2 p.m. HKT.

1. Cotton products are recyclable only in a few communities that have appropriate recycling facilities.

2. In composting tests, cotton fabric samples underwent a weight loss of approximately 50-77% after 90 days in a composting facility. Li, Lili; Frey, Margaret; Browning, Kristie (2010). Biodegradability study on cotton and polyester fabrics. Journal of Engineered Fiber and Fabrics, 5(4), 42–53.