Unfortunately, conventional cotton farming is still ‘king’ over organic agriculture. And although cotton only makes up 3% of the worlds crops, it is responsible for nearly 35 percent of the insecticide and pesticide use each year. Even scarier, it takes about a third of a pound of pesticides and fertilizers to produce a single non-organic cotton shirt.

Pesticide use causes water and air pollution and up to 20,000 fatalities and three million chronic health problems annually such as Parkinson’s, birth defects, brain cancer and leukemia. Also, cotton byproducts fed to livestock introduces pesticides into the food chain.

Worst of all, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, of the 15 pesticides most likely to cause cancer, seven are used in growing non-organic cotton.