Water is Precious

Water is something all of us need to survive – but due to climate change, our planet’s natural rhythm is being thrown out of whack. These days, we see more and more deluges and severe droughts happening around the world. Water is precious, and changing our consumption of everyday products – especially the ones that use cotton – can make a difference.

Not-so-natural

A label saying “100% natural cotton” sounds eco-friendly right? Well... not exactly. Yes, cotton comes from a plant and is therefore ’natural’, but that word has been used for decades to greenwash products. Although something may grow from the Earth’s soil, the way it is grown and produced can be highly questionable and harmful to our environment. In fact, non-organic cotton has been dubbed the “world’s dirtiest crop”.2

Cotton is thirsty

Conventionally grown cotton is thirsty. It requires between 7,000 and 29,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of cotton1. Non-organic cotton uses loads of precious water because it is grown intensively with little crop rotation, thus depleting the soil. In order to compensate, water is used – a lot of it. Providing water to cotton fields is inefficient, resulting in excessive evaporation. It’s estimated that 40% of this water is wasted! To top it off, cotton crops are heavily sprayed with pesticides, and water is required to mix with these sprays.

Organic for the win

Now let’s compare this to the way Organic Cotton is grown. Organic cotton uses about 90% less precious water than non-organic cotton. Organically farmed cotton creates healthy soils, which act like a sponge, soaking up water during floods and holding it for longer in times of drought. Organically grown cotton also doesn’t use any pesticides – so there is no leaching of chemicals into the waterways which can have harmful impacts on the ecosystem around cotton fields. Talk about a win-win-win!

Our mission to conserve water

Here at Oi, we use 100% certified organic cotton in our range of pads, liners and tampons. We believe your body and our planet deserve the best. To be certain our products are of the highest quality we can possibly make them, we certify our pads, liners and tampons to the GOTS standard. Very few other companies in the period care market certify their products to the GOTS standard, so here at Oi we’re passionate and proud to meet this bar.

What does this mean for you? Well, this means you can be assured the Oi pads, tampons & liners you are putting inside and around your body are not only better for you, but are protecting what’s precious in our world – water.