For $200, you can now invest in the eco-fashion label Christy Dawn. The label is selling "plots" in the organic, sustainable cotton farm in India that provides the raw materials for their clothing. At the end of the season, you're paid back with store credit. If the harvest is good, you might get back more than the initial $200 you invested. On the other hand, if it's a bad year for cotton, you could lose most or all of your money.
Store credit is actually a pretty good return on investment, if you like Christy Dawn's style—loose, flowing, bohemian—think 1960s hippies for the modern world. Their clothes are expensive (a dress runs about $200–300), but people with $200 to spend can become part of the solution to a big environmental problem. Manufacturing fabric is an energy-intensive, chemically-laden process when done on an industrial scale. Even so-called "natural" fabrics like cotton are terrible for the environment, using vast amounts of resources. For instance, it typically takes up to 2,700 litres of water and produces about 2.6kg of CO₂ to make a single cotton t-shirt.
So Christy Dawn began their own cotton farm in India to oversee the environmentally sustainable production of raw materials. You can support their efforts, and get a good return on investment even if it's a bad year for cotton. Long-term, you're earning a more sustainable Earth to live on.
