Lab-Grown Cotton Startup Can Make Clothes Greener, More Ethical
Boston-based Galy, which uses technology similar to cell-based meat, is aiming to drastically reduce cotton’s environmental impact.
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Photographer: Bloomberg Creative Photos/BloombergGinning, blowing, carding, drawing, roving, spinning, weaving, dyeing, cutting, sewing, ironing, shipping and trucking — all the steps it took to turn some cotton bolls into your T-shirt. Those processes also contribute the most to the planet-warming impact of the clothing fiber.
Growing cotton bolls itself sucks up huge amounts of water, pesticides and fertilizers. For all the water you'll ever use to wash your cotton T-shirt over its entire lifetime, it will have taken 50 times as much water to grow the cotton that went into it. Cotton uses about 2.3% of global arable land and accounts for 16% for all insecticide sales. And the fashion industry has been forced to reckon with allegations of forced labor and poor working conditions in certain cotton-harvesting regions.