I often mention that nearly all of our clothing range is organic. So, why is that important and what does it mean?

The obvious reason is that we don't want to have pesticides and other nasties in contact with our babies' or kids' sensitive skins. And of course we want to leave a clean world for our children. For this ecological reason we use organic natural fibres such as cotton. 

But as always when you ask one question, more will follow. What happens to the carefully grown organic cotton? What needs to be done to make the naturally brownish fibres into a beautifully coloured fabric? What do you use to bleach it? What chemicals do you dye it with? 

What then needs to happen to the fabric with gorgeous fun patterns before we have a piece of kids clothing that can be worn? Who does the cutting and the sewing? Where are the factories? How is the cute baby suit now packaged, labelled and transported? Now we have come to the other aspect of GOTS certification, our social responsibility to all the people in the world. We certainly don't want to wear clothes made by children or by anybody not properly paid for their work.

So it gets a little complicated, and I for one, am grateful that I don't have to ask all these questions every time I buy organic clothing for my children.

For that we have GOTS! Global Organic Textile Standard.

GOTS has its own website, so you can really get into it, but basically the manufacturers have to prove that their clothes fully represent ecologically and socially responsible manufacturing. And voila' they get to put a label onto their end product.

There are two different labels - ORGANIC and MADE WITH X% ORGANIC

Label grade 1 - ORGANIC requires that the garment is at least 95% organic + maximum of 5% non-organic natural or synthetic fibres.

Label grade 2 - MADE WITH ORGANIC requires that the garment is at least 70% certified organic fibres + maximum of 30% non organic fibres BUT maximum of 10% synthetic fibres (respective 25% for socks, leggings and sportswear)

It's not easy to get the GOTS label, nor should it be! And once a manufacturer gets it, they need to keep the standards up not to lose it.

When you shop at Kids Love Rainbow Colours, you can find the GOTS label displayed in the product description of all the pieces of clothing that have been GOTS certified. And you know that all the questions have been asked and answered as they should have been.