how many cotton plants would it take to make 1 sock

Question: how many cotton plants would it take to make 1 sock
- Keywords:
  environment,
  quirky,
  topical
Asked by wookiee to Amelia, Izzy, Sarah on 19 Mar 2014.
- Sarah Harvey answered on 19 Mar 2014:
  
  Love this question!
  
  It’s hard to find out exactly but I think you’d need several plants to produce a sock!
  
  Each plant contains what’s called bolls of cotton (the fluffy blobs!) and has around 100 of these, and each boll contains about 500,000 fibres of cotton! However these fibres are tiny so you need a lot of them to create an item of clothing. Typically cotton is harvested into bales and one bale can produce 350 isn pairs of jeans – and this is from a whole acre of plants (around 50000 although it varies!) Obviously jeans are bigger than socks though 😛
- Amelia Frizell-Armitage answered on 19 Mar 2014:
  
  I reckon a couple of plants! Although I’m not really sure.
  However I can say that we make around 20 million tonnes of cotton a year! That’s a lot of cotton, and a lot of socks!
- Isabel Webb answered on 19 Mar 2014:
  
  Great question. I think the other two did most of the maths for me!
  
  Of course, we now have lots of ways to make man made fibres like nylon instead – which reduces demand on the cotton industry.
- anon answered on 20 Mar 2014:
  
  only 1, but it would take a very very long time

Question: how many cotton plants would it take to make 1 sock