"An organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production."

[mahatmakanejeeves]

This would be terrifying if that were somehow a threat to the planet.

Use cotton. Use plastic. Use paper. It’s fine. The planet doesn’t care.

Today's alarming statistic: "An organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production": https://nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climate-crisis.html

Link to tweet

[jimfields33]

1. Reminds me of those days of "Use plastic bags. Save a tree"

If only we knew.

[viva la]

2. "The planet doesn't care?"

Not sure what that means. I don't know about canvas, but plastic seems to be having a very bad effect on the ocean and living things too.

I'm very intrigued by "pea protein plastic" that Cambridge U scientists have developed. (actually edible.) Plastic is SO useful, which is of course why we have so much of it. But even when it finally degrades, it becomes little microbits that I do worry might cause all sorts of problems for us and other creatures.

Plant-based single-use plastic.

[LT Barclay]

3. Monterey bay aquarium gave us biodegradable utensils made

of potatoes.

[viva la]

16. That's interesting!

I'd love to try those out.

[CrispyQ]

4. For over two decades I hardly collected any plastic bags, & then in one year of pandemic...

The number of bags the shoppers used was stunning, often times, one item in a bag. And a big bag, too.

[Magoo48]

5. Where does one begin with this load of myopic bullshit.

As one who works in marine-plastic collection, I can assure everyone that millions dead, and soon to be dead, and suffering animals—the planet does care.

[SWBTATTReg]

6. I will look at my cotton T-shirts in a different way now, but this trend in using cotton has been...

around for centuries, why all of a sudden now is this issue coming up? Why hasn't this person mentioned the millions of items of clothing made out of cotton? And they don't suggest a viable and feasible alternative, not helpful either.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. I'm sure you saw the show on PBS years ago about how many gallons of water go into

growing one pound of cotton.

Full disclosure: I have lots of all-cotton garments too.

[SWBTATTReg]

10. No, I didn't, but I wouldn't be surprised. There are many items that are grown that require ...

loads of water too, besides just cotton...not to mention items that are manufactured, that require loads of water (I won't list here, available via a goggle search)...

Other crops are wheat, sugarcane, eggplant, watermelon, onion, spinach, strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, etc.

Tree nuts like almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and cashews are actually some of the most water-intensive crops grown today (me ---> farmers in Calif. are actually pulling out their nut trees as a result of their water shortages in Calif. too as we speak)...


Perhaps this is a desirable trend that those that are suffering water shortages are thus reverting to items/crops that need less water? I don't know. Especially if this drought continues in the West, I suspect that this will be so, that they'll shift their production somewhat to what's actually readily available in their environment.

One additional point too, farmers etc. in these irrigation fed farming areas have always not paid the full price of the water that they receive via irrigation ... perhaps maybe a more realistic, market-based pricing is needed too?

[Tumbulu]

13. I am an organic cotton breeder and grower in the irrigated west

Last edited Wed Aug 25, 2021, 02:19 PM - Edit history (1)

And cotton is a very very low value crop. It tends to be produced during years where water in plentiful. Like many other low value crops. And or on land that nothing else can grow upon. Cotton can be grown on super salt saturated soils.

The permanent crops such as trees and vines that produce fruit and nuts are a huge investment, and during years of drought people use whatever precious water resources that they have to keep their expensive crops going. They do not waste water on low value row crops. Most wheat ( another low value row crop) is irrigated only supplementally when there is not adequate winter rainfall. And in years like this last one, nobody except people trying to keep their seed lines alive wasted water that way. Irrigating is expensive in terms of time and equipment, even without the cost of the water, which varies greatly, area by area.

Cotton is a plant that requires far less water than most row crops- compare it to alfalfa or vegetables- but it’s low value leads people to consider it a waste of resources. But cotton was not always such a low value crop. It just is now.

The value is in the manufacturing of it into usable products. And it’s seed for dairy feedstuff.

But old memes take a long time to die. And this is yet another one of them.

[SWBTATTReg]

17. Thank you for sharing this, full of relevant facts and personal knowledge, which I greatly ...

appreciate. Best wishes to you...

[quaint]

20. Organic cotton totes can easily be made re-using old organic cotton clothes.

Re-use is more efficient than recycling.
Plastic, bad.

[Dream Girl]

9. Follow the money.

[Scrivener7]

8. Who uses ORGANIC cotton to make shopping bags?

What is up with the NYT? This is scare mongering.

[Tumbulu]

12. It is!

[Tumbulu]

15. The waste from the combing process can be made it not lower value fabrics

such as canvas. So using those comber wastes for totes and bags like this are a decent and thrifty use of a normal by products of manufacturing. The more organic cotton that is used for higher end products, the more of this by product stream is generated.

[Tumbulu]

11. What a ridiculous argument

Like plastic bags don’t matter?

And I cut up old clothing and bags and use them as rags, don’t you?

And they do biodegrade. Unlike plastic. OMG!

[NQAS]

14. Maybe that's true, maybe not. Don't know.

Sure, there's a link to a NYT article, but that kind of tweet on its own is alarmist and nothing more than click bait. Maybe the NYT article makes all the necessary comparisons. I'll check later. But on its own it just bugged me.

I was in the grocery store the other day, and an employee was taking new plastic bags out of their boxes. I was leaving the store and didn't pay close attention, but I though the box had a quantity of 10,000 single use plastic bags. Or maybe that was the box that held the boxes of bags. Whatever. That's a lot of bags. One store, one small town. There are three chain grocery stores in town. How many tens of thousands of bags are heading out of the store every day? Multiply that by the number of grocery stores nationwide, and worldwide.

There's no easy answer, of course. Sure, trees are renewable, but we're talking decades and decades. In the meantime, what would you like me to do? Gather all my groceries in a spare sheet? Oh, no, what's the impact of producing that sheet?

I think about these things in my business - do I ship in cardboard boxes and paper filler? Boxes and bubble wrap or sealed air bags? Poly mailers? Poly bubble mailers? What about the tape I use?

Bottom line, if there is such a thing on this issue, is that as individuals we need to make judgments calls and hope that we're doing the best we can.

[msongs]

18. biodegradable plastic can be made from corn nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

19. I know that cornstarch is added to plastic bags to make them break down, but

if I am not mistaken, all that happens is that bag falls apart into little itty-bitty pieces. The material is still the same, but now there are a million pieces of it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. Extensive debunking - 20k figure is just about ozone-destroying gas to cool natural gas pipelines

if that's what's used to generate electricity to power irrigation for organic cotton.

Link to tweet

Via Wonkette.

Not about, say, climate change, or the environmental damage from discarded bags.

Cherrypicking that 20,000 figure - done by the New York Times - really is awful clickbait bullshit. The NYT really should be ashamed of themselves.