Your wardrobe may not be the first place you'd think to look to reduce your CO2 output. But clothing manufacture involves agriculture, industry and commerce – and now, more so than ever, businesses are becoming fashion conscious about the choices they make as a statement about greenhouse gasses as well as style and brand promotion.

There is now a growing trend whereby distributors and end users are looking for clothing ranges, which are less harmful to the environment.

The fibre for making cotton is tough to grow, so farmers use enormous amounts of energy-intensive, CO2-emitting chemicals and fertilisers. According to the Organic Trade Association it takes threequarters of a pound of fertilisers and pesticides to produce just one pair of regular cotton jeans, while a T-shirt takes one-third of a pound.

Cotton uses more than 10% of the world's pesticides, a quarter of the world's insecticides and more insecticides than any other single crop. While the use of pesticides may not impact on the end user in the finished product, their use does endanger the health and safety of cotton farmers and workers. The alternative is to farm with organic fibres, which releases less CO2 into the air and use 50% less energy. Cotton, hemp, bamboo, ramie, linen, and silk can all be grown organically – as can wool, cashmere and alpaca, and it is believed that demand for organic cotton far outstrips supply.

The recycling of clothing is also on the increase, and end users and distributors are now looking for promotional clothing that uses recycled content. The environmental impact of recycling worn-out polyester into new polyester fibre, for example, is significantly lower than making that same fibre anew, and CO2 savings can be as high as 71%.

In this industry, promotional clothing is often based on cost, practicality and fashion rather than ethics. However, as companies and organisations of all sizes become aware of the world around us, many are now beginning to ask a number of different questions such as: where has this been made? What sort of conditions are those producing the clothes working under? Are they getting paid enough? This, of course, is where Fairtrade comes in.

Only a tiny proportion of clothes are manufactured in the UK. To keep costs down, companies prefer to import clothes from countries where labour expenses are low and workers have fewer rights. In 2004, the EU imported 71bn euros' worth of clothing – with over 50% coming from China, Turkey, Romania, Bangladesh and Tunisia.

The clothing industry is notorious for its poor treatment of workers, and there have been many high-profile campaigns to persuade companies to take more responsibility for overseas workers, but it's not all bad news. In the promotional sector many suppliers have codes of conduct, or work with manufacturers who are members of the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI), which aims to change the way companies do business.

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