Ethical Fashion

Rapanui is an Eco-Fashion company from the Isle of Wight, that makes Organic, Ethical clothing using Renewable Energy with award-winning traceability. Rapanui is about making eco-fashion cool.

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Ethical Fashion

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Environental Policy Statement

The Trouble with cotton

The dangers faced by impoverished, illiterate farmers and child workers, to keep our cotton clothes cheap, is unacceptable.

child labour problem with cotton clothing

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fibre that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants. The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, and India. The fibre most often is spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile, which makes cotton the most widely used natural-fibre cloth in clothing today.

Unfortunately our demand for cheap clothing, and the out-of-sight, out-of-mind nature of third-world supply chains means that there is a hidden human cost to clothing that few are aware of: Vomiting, paralysis, incontinence, coma, seizures and death are some of the many side effects suffered by farmers and children in the developing world who are routinely exposed to pesticides, many of which are banned or restricted in use in the West.

Steve Trent, Director of Environmental Justice Foundation, a leading research and pressure group, says “With no less than 99% of the world’s cotton farmers living in the developing world, the pesticides are applied in fields where illiteracy is high and safety awareness is low, putting both the environment and lives at risk”. He adds “The dangers faced by poor illiterate children and farmers, to keep our clothes cheap, is unacceptable”.

The danger of Chemical exposure

Cotton grows on 2.4% of the world’s arable land, yet it is responsible for the release of over US$2 billion of chemical pesticides each year. Farming cotton uses more chemicals per unit area than any other crop and accounts in total for 10-16% of the world's pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, and defoliants). Nearly half of these are considered toxic enough to be classified as 'hazardous' by the World Health Organisation: Aldicarb, a powerful nerve agent, is one of the most toxic pesticides applied to cotton, yet it is also the 2nd most used pesticide in all cotton production globally. A single teaspoonful of Aldicarb on the skin would be sufficient to kill an adult.

Pesticides are hazardous by design – these are chemicals manufactured with the aim of killing, repelling or inhibiting the growth of living organisms. An estimated 1 million to 5 million cases of pesticide poisoning occur every year, resulting in 20,000 reported deaths among agricultural workers and at least 1 million requiring hospitalisation. There are long term effects environmentally with decreased biodiversity and shifting equilibrium of ecosystems becoming permanent with continued use of pesticides.

At Rapanui we don’t believe this is right. We use organic cotton instead.

Child Labour

Over two-thirds of the world’s cotton is grown in developing countries and the former Soviet Union. Valued at over $30 billion every year, global cotton production should be improving lives. But this ‘white gold’ too often brings misery. Although some progress is being made, the unsustainable, inequitable and abusive conditions under which much of the world’s cotton is produced, continues.

In Uzbekistan – the world’s 3rd largest cotton exporter – the government orders hundreds of thousands of children – some as young as seven – to harvest the annual cotton crop. Hard work for little or no pay, cotton benefits not the rural poor, but the ruling dictatorship, which derives millions from the export of cotton. In Andhra Pradesh, India, over 100,000 children have been documented working for 13 hours a day for just US50 cents. In West Africa, children are trafficked to work in cotton fields.

The conventional cotton industry relies on a high level of forced child labour.

Following the recommendation of the Environmental Justice Foundation, we have chosen to work with factories that can trace the source of their fabric and boycott Uzbek cotton entirely. At Rapanui our clothing is made in a child labour and sweatshop free environment. Find out more about the Fair Wear Foundation Code of Labour Practise here.

Water

Cotton is the world’s thirstiest crop – six pints of water are needed to produce one cotton bud, which equates to 20’000 litres of water to grow a single kilogram of Cotton.

In Central Asia the demand for water to irrigate cotton fields has contributed to the draining of the Aral Sea, a crisis so acute that the United Nations described it as one of the “most staggering disasters of the 20th century”.

At Rapanui our 100% Organic Cotton products are grown in a monsoon valley - where natural rainfall provides most of the water needed for the growth of the raw material - and a closed-loop, three-phase water filtration system means that 95% of all dyewater is reused.