Veronika Wild

  The world's most popular fibre is also the thirstiest  Image by Jim Black from Pixabay This page is dedicated to the people who make our clothes including the families of those who perished in the Rana Plaza collapse There is no doubt as textiles go, cotton is simply the thirstiest crop around. You only have to look at the Aral Sea , once the world's fourth largest lake, to see the effect after only a few decades of cotton production (since 1961).  It takes on average approximately 20,000 litres (5,283 gallons) of water to produce one Kg of cotton which is enough to make one t-shirt or one pair of jeans.  Each year the world produces 25 million tonnes of cotton , taking up 2.5% of the world’s arable land, mostly in the warm, dry and water - stressed places such as India, Pakistan, the southern states of the USA, China, West Africa and Uzbekistan and uses 3% of the world’s agricultural water. Though around one quarter of the world’s cotton ...

Nature continues without us. Though we are still in lock down and I really miss getting out into the bush and watching the turning of the deciduous beech , there's still a bit of autumn colour about. It is also the season of harvest, pods, fungi, fruit and berries and our native plants put on their own display, evergreen though they may be. Apples hanging over a fence   Pumpkins on the nature strip Just a jumble of leaves with one old - fashioned scented violet Native species such as these sheoaks offer their fruit too (Did you know that there were he oaks too?) I really miss going fungi hunting too, but there are a surprising number around the neighbourhood too- no edible ones alas. Banksia Serrata  - Old Man Banksia bristling with the enormous seedpods which inspired author May Gibbs to call them the Banksia Men, and make them the villains in her stories about the Gumnut Babies