Maggie's Functional Organic Cotton Socks Tri-Packs

Choose type and quantity
9-11 (Black/Natural/Navy) $18.49  9-11 (Forest/Navy/Raspberry) $18.49  9-11 (Natural) $18.49  9-11(Eggplant/Natural/Tie Dye) $19.49  10-13 (Black/Natural/Navy) $18.75  10-13 (Natural) $18.75  10-13(Eggplant/Natural/TieDye) $19.49	Quantity: 1Quantity: 2Quantity: 3Quantity: 4Quantity: 5Quantity: 6Quantity: 7Quantity: 8Quantity: 9Quantity: 10Quantity: 11Quantity: 12Quantity: 13Quantity: 14Quantity: 15

Maggie's Functional Organic Cotton Socks Tri-Packs
Organic Cotton Clothes
Maggie's Functional Organic Cotton Clothing

89% Certified Organic Cotton, 10% Nylon, 1% Lycra
Available in size 9-11 and size 10-13

Organic Cotton in our Socks:
Our socks are made from several counts of Certified Organic Long-Staple Cotton yarn from the U.S. and Peru. They also contain specially made cotton-covered Lycra and Natural Rubber. The Lycra and Rubber are used to aid stretch and durability and to ensure a good fit for a wide variety of feet. Our Lycra is entirely wrapped in cotton. For more on our Organic Cotton please see the FAQ’s section.

Sock Content:
Each sock label lists exact fiber percentages by weight, down to 1/100th of 1%. Many other companies follow the suggestion of hosiery trade associations of NOT listing a fiber if it represents less than 5% of the total weight of a sock. Don’t be fooled by socks that claim to be One Hundred Percent Cotton! Fiber percentages are listed with each product description in our Shopping Cart.

Organic Wool:
Our domestic Organic Wool comes from livestock raised on 100% organically- grown feed. The sheep have not been treated with any synthetic hormones, pesticides or vaccinations. They are grazed on sustainably-managed Rangeland in the western U.S., as well as on an Organic Vineyard in Northern California. For more on our unique wool visit Maggie’s Organics Wonderful Wool.

Apparel:
Maggie’s Apparel is made from 100% Certified Organic Cotton. We do not add any traditional chemical softeners in our knitting and our cotton is ring spun, providing a unique softness.

Our Apparel is sewn in Neuva Vida, Nicaragua by the women of The Fair Trade Zone, a 100% worker-owned cooperative. For more on this project and to meet some of these amazing women, see "Ants that Moved Mountains video". (15 minute, 36MB, Windows Media Player)

Dyeing:
All of Maggie's dyed products are made with the least amount of environmental impact possible, while still assuring color fastness and vibrancy. Initially Maggie’s colors were all created with "natural" dyes. After we encountered repeated problems with color fastness and with heavy metal mordant used in these dyes, we switched to low-impact dyes in 1996.

All of our dyes now meet or exceed the pending North American Organic Fiber Processing standards, which set specific limits for dyestuff, including metals allowed and discharge in effluent water.

Adult Socks (All Except 99% Crew)
Maggie's Size	Women's Shoe Size	Men's Shoe Size
9-11	5 1/2 - 9	4 - 7
10-13	10 - 13	8 - 12
14-16		12 1/2 +

How Maggie's Organic Clothes Are Made
There is a seven-step process to turn bales of cotton into T-shirts or socks. After the cotton is grown and it is certified as 100% organic it follows this pattern:

1. It is harvested by organic farmers
   
2. Then it is "ginned," which cleans it
   
3. The cotton is then spun, which turns it into yarn
   
4. The yarn is then "knitted," which turns it into fabric
   
5. At this point it goes through a finishing process which turns it into smooth fabric
   
6. Garment dying takes place if needed
   
7. Finally it is cut and sewn
   

This entire process takes approximately 8-9 weeks. Each step is done in a separate facility which makes our shipping costs add up quickly. For example, our T-Shirts are cut and sewn in Nicaragua by a worker-owned cooperative. We choose to support this venture as it provides sustainable wages to their members, and enables our sewers to create their own future. The shipping costs along with customs procedures are above average and sometimes can create hurdles that we don’t anticipate.

At each step we make sure not to add petroleum scours, silicon waxes, formaldehyde, anti-wrinkling agents, chlorine bleaches, or other unauthentic materials. Through all of this, we think it is worth it as we are providing an alternative to conventional cotton T-Shirts. Since the average person spends most of their life either sleeping on sheets, or wearing clothing, we are committed to manufacturing products with organic fibers that do not include pesticides or chemicals.

We’ve also managed to find and keep some pretty amazing partners in the effort… from the farmers that grow our cotton while treating the soil with dignity and respect, to the folks who sew and print our tees, to the customers who always manage to grab our socks first out of the sock drawer.

Below you will find some enlightening information about Conventional Cotton growing practices prevalent in the US. This information is largely responsible for getting us into the Organic Cotton business. Once one realizes the enormity of the pesticides and chemicals used each year to grow and process cotton, it is easy to see why we are so passionate about what we do.

• Cotton is the second most pesticide-la
  
• The world’s Cotton crop represents approximately 3% of all cultivated land. This same crop utilizes 25% of the world's annual pesticide production, and 10% of the annual herbicide production.
  
  
• Five of the top nine pesticides used on cotton in the U.S. (cyanide, dicofol, naled, propargite, and trifluralin) are KNOWN cancer-causing chemicals. All nine are classified by the U.S. EPA as Category I and II— the most dangerous chemicals.
  
  
• It is estimated that it takes approximately 1/3 pound of chemicals to grow enough cotton to make just one T-shirt.
  
  
• In the U.S. today, it takes approximately 8-10 years, and $100 million to develop a new pesticide for use on cotton. It takes approximately 5-6 years for weevils and other pests to develop an immunity to that same new pesticide.
  
  
• Cottonseed, the by-product of ginning cotton fiber, accounts for 60% of the yield from each harvest. The cottonseed is where the most concentrated amounts of pesticide residues remain. Some of this cottonseed is made into oil; the oil you read on the ingredient labels of cookies, cakes, and snacks. Some of this cottonseed is sent to our dairies and cattle ranches. This chemical cottonseed ‘enriches’ the butterfat in dairy, and marbles the beef that we eat.
  
  
• In California, it has become illegal to feed the leaves, stems, and short fibers of cotton known as ‘gin trash’ to livestock, because of the concentrated levels of pesticide residue. Instead, this gin trash is used to make furniture, mattresses, swabs, cottonballs and tampons. The average American woman will use 11,000 tampons during her lifetime.
  
  
• During a tour of California’s San Joaquin valley, where over 18 million pounds of pesticides are sprayed annually onto one million acres of cotton, a group stopped at two enormous toxic settlement ponds, where contaminated water from the fields is drained and left to seep into the soil. This water contains huge concentrations of salt, selenium, boron and pesticide runoff, which has caused serious damage to soil and groundwater. "(This land) It will never be usable again" says Will Allen, of the Sustainable Cotton Project. "And I don’t mean in our lifetimes; I mean forever."
  
  
• In California’s San Joaquin Valley, estimates are that less than 25% of a pesticide sprayed from a crop duster ever hits the crop. The remainder can drift for several miles, coming to rest on fruit and vegetable crops, and farm- workers. One year more than one hundred workers fell ill after a single incident of such drift onto an adjacent vineyard.
  
  
• One of the commonly used pesticides on cotton throughout the world, endosulfan, leached from cottonfields into a creek in Lawrence County, Alabama during heavy rains in 1995. Within days 245,000 fish were killed over 16 mile stretch. 142,000 pounds of endosulfan were used in California in 1994.
  
  
• The problems with clothing production don’t stop in the field. During the conversion of conventional cotton into clothing, numerous toxic chemicals are added at each stage— silicone waxes, harsh petroleum scours, softeners, heavy metals, flame and soil retardants, ammonia, and formaldehyde— to name just a few.