The Hot Love Movement

Our Earth is the ultimate giver. Aside from the sunlight, everything we need and get for our survival comes from within our planet and its atmosphere. Therefore it is our belief that we need to keep it healthy in order for it to keep providing us with what we really need.

Why we use Organic cotton?

Cotton is one of the main commodities of our world. Humans have used it for millennia. Today it is the biggest and most important “non-food” agricultural crop in the world yielding 21.8 million tons per year. In addition another 34 million tons of high protein cottonseed is produced for food and animal feed annually.

But the conventional cotton industry uses more agrochemicals, such as fertilizer and insecticides, per unit area more than any other crop industry, and accounts in total for 16% of the world's pesticides. Billions of dollars are spent anually on these chemicals, some of which are classified by the World Health Organization as “extremely hazardous.” Annually, these chemicals cause pesticide poisoning to over a million agricultural workers around the world. Most of these workers have little safety awareness and literacy. They live in poor rural communities in economically developing countries such as China, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Mexico, the West African region, etc, which lack human rights and labor laws. As a result child labor is also widely spread.

The chemical pesticides applied to cotton can contaminate cottonseed and its derivatives and therefore may enter the human food chain. In addition the chemicals used in the processing of cotton also pollute the air and surface waters.

Organic cotton is cotton that is grown without pesticides and from plants which are not genetically modified. Composted manures and cover crops replace synthetic fertilizers, weeding strategies are used instead of herbicides, beneficial insects and trap crops control insect pests and alternatives to toxic defoliants prepare plants for harvest.

For at least 7000 years cotton was grown in similar ways. It all changed in the late 1940s with the advent of neurotoxins that were considered to be a cheaper way of controlling pests. Most common effect is paralysis, which eventually leads to death.

Unfortunately today, only 0.15 percent of the world's cotton is guaranteed to be free of pesticide and organic because it costs more to produce. Still, we are firm believers in organic agriculture and choose to support the organic cotton industry by using organic cotton for our t-shirts.

Why we use water based low-impact fiber-reactive dyes?

Unfortunately, conventional screen printing is damaging to the environment, the health of printers and people who wear the garments (because of the toxicity of many of the chemical inks/plastisol, cleaners, preparation products and waste products from the silk screening process). The major health concern about plastisol inks used for silk screen printing on t-shirts is that they contain phthalates and PVCs (polyvinyl chloride).

Phthalates, or phthalate esters, are chemical compounds mainly used as plasticizers, which are substances added to plastics such as PVCs to increase their flexibility. The U. S. screen printing industry alone uses an estimated 1.5 million gallons of plastisol ink every year. 30% to 50% of the ink contains PVC (polyvinyl chloride). It is one of the most hazardous plastics for the environment. During the production of PVC, dioxins are created and released. Dioxins are highly toxic and are carcinogens. PVC is rarely recycled so it usually goes to the land fill or is burned. Burning it releases dioxins, furans and hydrochloric acid into the air. In effect, they wind up in the land and water. They also build up in the fatty tissues of animals. If it goes to the land fill, over time the phthalates and other additives begin to leak into the land. They take centuries to decompose. About 800 million pounds of phthalates are produced each year globally and are used in a wide array of products such as textile screen printing inks, nail polish, paint pigments, electronic devices, adhesives, medical devices, toys, sex toys, kitchen utensils, etc.

There are a host of studies casting concern about the health consequences of different classes of phthalates. Some cause allergies in children, while others are known to cause reproductive organ abnormalities in lab animals. Although they may not cause directly cancer or asthma, when a small exposure comes from hundreds of sources everyday then the effects are uncertain but probably accumulative. Multiple chemical sensitivities are the result of a thousand chemical straws gradually wearing down the body’s natural immunities breaking the body’s resistance to environmental impurities.

As you can imagine, phthalates are a huge global industry so of course organizations such as Phthalates.org present a strong defense of phthalates. They state that “No governmental review has found any phthalate unsafe as used in products for the general public.” However, we all know by now that most governments world wide are subject to corporate funding, and therefore may purposely support certain types of industries regardless of what the evidence based on scientific research and consumer experience say.

We chose to print our t-shirts using a new technology of water-based chemistry for printing and dyeing fabric where the print chemically bonds with the cellulose fiber of the fabric. These kinds of dyes are also known as low-impact fiber-reactive dyes. They do not contain PVC’s, phthalates or solvents. The absorption rate of low-impact dyes is at least 70%, creating less waste water runoff and therefore a lower impact on the environment. They contain no heavy metals or other known toxic substances, and they meet all European Union criteria for being an eco-friendly pigment.

Depending upon the nature and degree of their chemical sensitivities, people with mild chemical sensitivities can often wear organic clothing with fiber-reactive dyes.