100% Organic Cotton Re-usable Menstrual Pads are better for the environment and for women who are looking for alternatives to disposable menstrual products that contribute to waste production. You can go through several thousand pads in your lifetime, and all those pads have to be manufactured and then added to our landfills.

What is Organic Cotton?

Organic cotton is grown using methods and materials that have a low impact on the environment. Organic production systems replenish and maintain soil fertility, reduce the use of toxic and persistent pesticides and fertilizers, and build biologically diverse agriculture. Third-party certification organizations verify that organic producers use only methods and materials allowed in organic production. Organic Cotton is very soft, and gets even softer with each washing. It's stronger and more durable than most other fabrics.

Cotton is one of the most heavily pesticide-intensive crops grown in the United States. All synthetic fabrics are produced from petroleum derivatives. What this means is that most fabrics are very unfriendly to the environment and potentially dangerous.

Today's pesticides are very effective. However, to be as effective as they are, they're extraordinarily strong, and long lived. They pollute the ground for years, draining it of natural nutrients, forcing the use of more, and more dangerous, fertilizers and eventually making it unsuitable for farming use. This is the heart of "unsustainable" agriculture. The pesticides eventually leech into and pollute the groundwater, making its way to our faucets and causing everyone a myriad of health problems. The workers that use them are at extreme risk for cancer and many other diseases. And finally, do they stick to the fabric through the manufacturing process? If they don't, it's probably due to the bleaching process most cotton is subject to. The bleach is even worse than the pesticides!

A Short History of Pesticides

"A Short History of Pesticides" is used with the permission of The Organic Cotton Site

While pesticides had existed for centuries, World Wars I and II served as a watershed for the modern agri-chemical industry. Chemicals and technologies developed for warfare, were later focused on the farm.

Crop dusting on cotton began in the Mississippi Delta as early as 1922.

Swiss chemist Paul Müller discovered the insecticidal properties of DDT in 1939, an innovation that later earned him the Nobel Prize.

German scientists experimenting with nerve gas during World War II synthesized the organophosphorous insecticide Parathion, marketed in 1943, and still widely in use today. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, these types of chemicals became major pest control agents.

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's landmark challenge to the abuse of synthetic pesticides, was published in 1962, and initiated the movement toward agrochemical regulation that is still fiercely debated.

Today's pesticides are designed to persist for shorter periods in the environment and are supposedly less lethal than the early days of calcium arsenate and DDT.

Yet more pesticides are used in more countries than ever before - over $26 billion annually.

In response to increasing resistance to chemicals, one corporation has marketed a new variety of "bio-engineered" cotton which can withstand even greater applications of herbicides.

Some facts that you should know about Waste Production

• In the U.S., 4.39 pounds of trash per day and up to 56 tons of trash per year are created by the average person.
• Only about one-tenth of all solid garbage in the United States gets recycled.
• Every year we fill enough garbage trucks to form a line that would stretch from the earth, halfway to the moon.
• Each day the United States throws away enough trash to fill 63,000 garbage trucks.
• Almost 1/3 of the waste generated the U.S. is packaging.
• Diapers: An average child will use between 8,000 -10,000 disposable diapers ($2,000 worth) before being potty trained. In the United States alone these single-use items consume nearly 100,000 tons of plastic and 800,000 tons of tree pulp. We will pay an average of $350 million annually to deal with their disposal and, to top it off, these diapers will still be in the landfill 300 years from now.
• Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
• Every year, Americans make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas.
• Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild our commercial air fleet every three months, and enough iron and steel to supply all our nation's automakers every day.
• Throwing away one aluminum can wastes as much energy as if that can were 1/2 full of gasoline.
• Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year. Most of it winds up in landfills.
• Each year, Americans trash enough office paper to build a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City..
• Enough hazardous waste is generated in one year to fill the New Orleans Superdome 1,500 times over.

• Every year, nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.
• Each American exerts three times as much pressure on the natural environment as the global average.
• America is home to 5% of the world's population, yet it consumes 1/3 of the Earth's timber and paper; making paper the largest part of the waste stream at 37.5% of the total waste stream.

• Recycling an aluminum soda can saves 96% of the energy used to make a can from ore, and produces 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution.
• One ton of paper from recycled pulp saves 17 trees, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 7,000 gallons of water, 4,200 kilowatt hours (enough to heat your home for half year), 390 gallons of oil, and prevents 60 pounds of air pollutants.
• It takes 90% less energy to recycle an aluminum can than to make a new one.

Related Articles:

Toxic Shock is a Nightmare: The Story of a Survivor
http://www.web.net/terrafemme/cashnightmare.htm

The Politics of Tampons
http://www.web.net/terrafemme/uspoltam.htm