IS YOUR ORGANIC BABY CLOTHING “REALLY” ORGANIC?

Let’s address the elephant in the organic cotton room. Are all organic cotton products created equally? The short answer is: no. 

The truth is, unlike food, textile products don’t have to be certified in order to be labelled organic. This has compromised the term “organic”--even clothing with as little as 10% of organic fibers can be labelled “organic.” As a parent dedicated to baby clothing free of harmful chemicals, you probably don’t want to pay more for an organic label that isn’t even truly organic. You shouldn’t have to squint at labels or read the fine print to figure out what percent of the cotton is organic; but since not all companies make the information easy to find, we figured we’d set things straight. The best tip we can give you is to look out for the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) symbol. This symbol ensures that a product really is organic from field to finished product. GOTS is the strictest global standard for organic materials.

If a product doesn’t have a GOTS certified label, that doesn’t necessarily mean it contains harmful chemicals. It is important to understand that buying organic only makes a difference when the fabric is coming from a country where there is heavy chemical use. If a country wasn’t using chemicals during the manufacturing process, then the product is inherently organic. We recommend either looking for the certification or finding the source where your clothing comes from. And while there is no comprehensive list of the countries who are doing things the “right” way, we do know of a few countries who are offenders of using pesticides, like China, Turkey, and India.

Want to know more about organic cotton? Read more here. For a full list of the GOTS certification requirements, read more here.