Our latest Ecotextile Talks podcast offers fresh perspective on cotton’s role in tackling climate change and explores the fascinating world of biogenic carbon storage
YORK – In our latest podcast, our host Philip Berman is joined by Dr Richard Venditti from the department of forest biomaterials at North Carolina State University; Steve Pires, associate director of sustainability at Cotton Incorporated; and Emily Graham, sustainability project manager at apparel brand Carhartt, to discuss the reshaping of our understanding of cotton’s role in combatting climate change.
They enjoy a wide-ranging discussion on biogenic carbon storage in cotton garments and recent developments in apparel reuse and recycling, as well taking a deep dive into a recent study which challenges conventional thinking about the environmental impact of cotton.
Highlighting the work of their 2024 co-study, Venditti and Pires explain the principle behind biogeneic storage and how it can be applied to the apparel sector. “This is when plant materials – anything that grows with photosynthesis – takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and puts it in the planet,” says Venditti.
“Then, if we take that plant and make a product out of its, and we keep that CO2 out of the atmosphere, that is successful biogenic carbon storage.”
Pires goes on to explain the main purposes of the study and how they used two different types of analysis to assess the environmental impact of cotton products through their life cycles.
“We had been thinking about this at Cotton Incorporated for a while before we made it a fully fledged project,” he tells Berman. “Some research that Richard did within the forest products industry dug into this concept with delayed emission timing of different types of products.
“And while a cotton garment may not store CO2 for as long as say a tree, or timber in building materials, it still does have an impact and therefore have a cooling effect on the planet.”
Explaining that the study used both static and dynamic life cycles, with the latter identifying which types of greenhouse gases are being emitted at each stage of a product’s life cycle, Pires highlights how this is a benefit that exists in everyone’s wardrobe.
“Now, if you think about your closet and how much cotton you have in there, that’s essentially stored carbon,” he says. “You can think of it as almost like a miniature forest living inside your closet that’s just carbon out of the atmosphere.”
Complementing this, Graham discusses Carhartts’s role in various cotton sustainability projects including its repair and resale schemes, its growing use of regenerative cotton, and the brand’s participation in the Go Green denim recycling programme.
This podcast follows on from last week’s Ecotextile Talks with Mike Schragger from the Sustainable Fashion Academy that takes a deep dive into a report which finds progress on climate change targets in the fashion sector is still far too slow.
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