Center for Social Innovation

Farmers with the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative (TOCMC) grow enough organic cotton each year to make 6.1 million T-shirts. These growers spare the environment millions of pounds of chemicals, claims the Sustainable Cotton Project, because growing organic cotton for a single T-shirt requires one-third of a pound less chemical than does growing the same amount of conventional cotton.

But between 1993 and 2003, the Lubbock-based cooperative couldn’t find enough buyers for its premium product. As a result, TOCMC wound up selling much of its harvest at suboptimal prices to manufacturers who would have been just as happy with cheaper, nonorganic cotton.

Two years later, TOCMC’s sales had increased 50 percent, and all of its buyers wanted – and were willing to pay for – organic cotton. The cooperative credits these gains to Organic ... Read more

• Fair Trade