Many art supplies are toxic--not good for the environment, not good for you. I try to look for materials that will get the job done, with minimal impact on the land, my septic system, my lungs, my skin and my pocketbook. I work almost exclusively with cotton fabric and cotton batting. I love cotton. But I know cotton is problematic.Cotton only comprises 2.5% of all agricultural land world wide, yet uses 16% of all pesticides and 6% of all herbicides worldwide. It is a soil-depleting crop regularly fertilized with petro-chemicals. And if all that weren't enough, cotton is grown intensively and requires large amounts of water for irrigation which contributes to soil salinity. Yikes.
Other than giving up quilting, I don't see an alternative to cotton fabric, but I have found a good quality batting made from, of all things, pop bottles. It feels and works like cotton batting, is soft, yet stable because it is cross-lapped and needle punched. The batting is a very light green, and I did wonder if the color would show through on light or white fabrics, but it doesn't. Dream Green is pretty inexpensive compared to cotton or wool batting, which is a plus, since most environmental better choices are usually more expensive than their mainstream cousins.
The queen-size batting of Quilter's Dream Green I bought says it is made from 20 pop bottles. I've made several wall quilts with it, and I'm very satisfied with the quality. Switching to Dream Green is not a huge save-the-Earth change, any more than my switch to shampoo and conditioning bars instead of bottles of those products, but you've got to start somewhere.
