Sustainability means working to mitigate impacts causing climate change.
In the last of our four-part series, we discuss how our Turkish cotton textiles can help you create real, tangible change in reducing your environmental impact and living a more sustainable life.
Our Turkish cotton is unique in that it doesn’t require the use of a clothes dryer, which reduces your environmental footprint by significantly lowering your potential electricity consumption. Clothes dryers are one of the biggest consumers of electricity of all household appliances, because they need lots of electricity to run a powerful motor, while simultaneously maintaining a heated environment to dry clothing. In fact, clothes dryers are so energy-intensive, that depending on the country and region you live in, pricing strategies may be in place to promote energy conservation, meaning that these appliances are only operated in off-peak hours. Unfortunately, out of all the textiles that you regularly dry in a dryer, traditional towels often require the most energy to dry properly.
Egyptian cotton towels are made from long-fibre cotton that is woven in such a way as to produce a soft, fluffy, and absorbent textile. The downside to this, of course, is that the water that is absorbed by the towel, needs to be dried off in the clothes dryer. So, while fluffy towels may feel soft and luxurious to use, that same plushness requires a lot of electricity to be brought back to its familiar, fluffy state.
By contrast, our Turkish towels are made from medium-length cotton fibres, instead of the long fibres that are found in traditional terrycloth towels. The result is a towel with a vastly different appearance, weight, and drying needs. Where traditional cotton towels are plush, thick, and heavy, our Turkish cotton towels are thin and lightweight. The shorter fibre lengths of Turkish cotton provides an excellent compromise between the towel’s absorbency and drying time. Unlike regular towels, Turkish towels can be air dried in just a few hours. On the other hand, we’ve probably all tried to air dry our terrycloth towels, only to find that the results are subpar: the towels wrinkle, they are stiff and not soft, and often smell musty. Turkish towels naturally air-dry back to their soft, lightweight state, without any compromise in tactile quality, and no disappointing mustiness.
Opting to replace your traditional towels with our Turkish towels means that you are investing in a less carbon-intensive lifestyle by eliminating the need to dry towels in a clothes dryer. This will greatly reduce your home’s energy consumption, while giving you peace of mind that you are supporting traditional methods of production, creating sustainable livelihoods for women living in rural communities, and are using long lasting, quality textiles that will remain effortlessly beautiful and functional for years to come.
We hope that these past few posts have made you think about ways that you can integrate sustainability into your lives. Buying less, buying mindfully, buying for versatility, supporting women-run businesses, and reducing your fossil fuel consumption are all ways that we can action our desires to reduce our environmental impact and support communities and the planet.