Patagonia Inc. to Use Organically Grown Cotton

Patagonia Inc., the Ventura-based producer of outdoor clothing, has announced that it will discontinue using conventional cotton in spring, 1996.

After that, the environmentally sensitive company says all its cotton-containing products will be made with organically grown cotton.

This isn’t the first time Patagonia has pioneered an anti-pollution policy.

For more than a year, the firm has been making some of its clothing with fiber from discarded plastic soda bottles. That is credited with having removed millions of bottles from the nation’s waste landfills.

The switch won’t fully assuage Patagonia’s corporate conscience, however. The company says further steps will be needed.

“Even organic cotton clothes entail practices that pollute: Mechanical pickers guzzle gas, spray drifts from other fields, wer use harmful dyes and we ship goods too many times at too many stages. All of these issues have to be addressed.”