What Is Organic Cotton?

How is organic cotton made?

Organic cotton is grown from ordinary cotton plants on land certified as organic, then ginned, spun and woven or knitted like any other cotton. The difference lies in the field and the paperwork, not the plant: in the US, both Upland and American Pima cotton are produced organically.

• The land. Under the US National Organic Program, a field can produce an organic crop only if no prohibited substance has been applied to it for 3 years before harvest. It also needs defined boundaries and buffer zones that keep prohibited substances from neighbouring land off the crop.
• The inputs. Synthetic substances are prohibited unless they appear on the programme’s list of permitted synthetics. Genetically engineered seed is not allowed, and sewage sludge is banned.
• Certification. Third-party certifiers check that each farm meets the federal organic regulations.
• Transition. US production figures list “transitional” bales separately from organic ones; GOTS calls fibre from transitioning farms “in-conversion”. According to the Organic Trade Association, US growers reported 1,201 transitional bales in 2024, alongside 56,717 organic bales.

After the gin, the US organic rules stop. The National Organic Program treats raw cotton, wool and flax (the plant behind linen) as farm products but has no processing standard for textiles. The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) covers the whole post-harvest processing stage, prohibits toxic inputs and bans child labour. The Organic Content Standard (OCS) does something narrower: it verifies that the organic fibre in a finished product really is certified organic.

Writing in 1993, the International Cotton Advisory Committee described organised organic cotton production as only three or four years old. It recorded a Texas Department of Agriculture organic certification programme for cotton from 1989 and an experimental project in Turkey started the same year.

What are the properties of organic cotton?

Organic cotton has the properties of the cotton variety it comes from, because organic certification controls farming and processing inputs, not fibre length, fineness or strength. The same organic claim can sit behind a jersey T-shirt, denim or poplin, and those cloths behave differently because of how they are built, not how the cotton was farmed.

Growing conditions can still affect the lint. The 1993 ICAC review warned that low nitrogen, and shortages of other nutrients, can weaken the plant and reduce both yield and lint quality on organic farms. It said yield trials and fibre assessments of breeding material have to be conducted under organic conditions. The 2014 life cycle assessment commissioned by Textile Exchange did not compare fibre quality at all.

Claims that organic cotton is automatically softer, stronger or kinder to skin are not part of any label grade. GOTS grades describe how much certified organic or in-conversion fibre a product contains, and nothing about its hand.

How is organic cotton graded or measured?

Organic cotton is measured twice: as cotton, by the usual cotton measures such as staple length, strength and fineness, and as an organic claim, by the share of certified organic fibre in the finished product.

How does organic cotton appear on a clothing label?

In the US, an “organic cotton” claim on a textile must meet USDA organic labelling policy, which applies in addition to the Federal Trade Commission’s Textile and Wool Act labelling rules. The USDA’s policy memo on textiles, first issued on 20 May 2011, sets the main points:

• A label may name a specific organic fibre (“organic cotton”) and state the percentage of organic fibre in the product.
• Every fibre called organic must be produced and certified under the National Organic Program regulations, and a single fibre cannot mix organic and non-organic sources.
• Textiles certified to GOTS may be sold as organic in the US, but may not display the USDA organic seal or refer to NOP certification.
• Only textiles certified under the NOP regulations themselves may carry the seal.

A GOTS label has its own fixed contents. Every one must show the GOTS logo, the label grade, a reference to the certification body and the certification number of the certified company. The certification body must approve the label before use.

A GOTS “made with 70% organic” tag therefore tells you that up to 30% of the fibre is not certified organic. The fibre-content line shows what that remainder is, for example polyester or elastane.

How do you tell good organic cotton from poor organic cotton?

Judge the claim as a certificate and the cloth as cotton: the organic label tells you how the fibre was grown and traced, not how well it was spun, woven or sewn.

1. Find the grade word. On a GOTS tag, “organic” means at least 95% certified organic fibre; “made with organic” means 70% to under 95% certified organic or in-conversion fibre, with the exact certified organic percentage printed.
2. Count the four required elements. Logo, label grade, certification body and certification number. A GOTS logo missing any of them does not meet GOTS labelling rules.
3. Read “in-conversion” correctly. It means the fibre came from farms still in transition, not fully certified organic land.
4. Check the seal against the standard. In the US, a USDA organic seal on a garment signals NOP certification of that textile; GOTS-certified goods are not allowed to carry it.
5. Then judge the fabric as cotton. The organic grade says nothing about staple length, yarn evenness or shrinkage, so those checks are the same as for conventional cotton.

Red flags: “organic” with no named standard, grade or certification number, and a GOTS “made with organic” tag with no percentage.

How do you care for organic cotton?

Organic cotton has no care rules of its own: follow the garment’s permanent care label, as you would for conventional cotton of the same weave or knit. If shrinkage worries you, look for cloth sold as pre-shrunk; the organic grade says nothing about it.

Is organic cotton sustainable?

Organic cotton removes genetically engineered seed and most synthetic pesticides and fertilisers from the farm, and an industry-commissioned study found lower climate and water impacts; how large the gain is depends on the region, the yield and the honesty of the certificate. Its claims deserve the same scrutiny as any other sustainable fashion claim.

What the life cycle assessment found

Textile Exchange commissioned PE International to compare organic and conventional cotton fibre, using farm data from 2008 to 2012/13 in India, China, Turkey, Tanzania and the USA. In its report, dated November 2014, it found these savings per tonne of fibre at the gin:

• 46% lower global warming potential
• 91% less blue (irrigation) water
• 62% lower non-renewable primary energy demand
• 70% lower acidification potential and 26% lower eutrophication potential

The report itself sets limits on those numbers. A global average “hides the regional variability”. Low irrigation in the study areas cannot be credited to organic farming alone; about 95% of the water used was rain and soil moisture. Land use, which rises as yield falls, was left out. Biodiversity and soil carbon were not assessed. The comparability with the conventional cotton study it used was not verified in the critical review.

Scale and integrity

Organic cotton is still a small share of the crop. According to the Organic Trade Association, about 706,000 tonnes were certified to one or more of 15 farm-level standards in 2023/24, 2.9% of world cotton production. In the US the figure was about 0.3% in 2024.

Certification can also fail. On 30 October 2020, GOTS reported “systematic fraud” in India: fake raw-cotton transaction certificates, with “assured knowledge” of 20,000 tonnes of fake material. It banned 11 companies from certification and said it would check all incoming organic raw-material transaction certificates for authenticity.