Efficient jeans are still hard to find. Conventionally grown cotton requires more pesticides to grow than any other crop. The more efficient method is to grow organic cotton or hemp. The surf company Reef makes some good organic cotton jeans, like their Heritage Jeans (shown above), their Philosopher Jeans and Heritage Cords. The outdoor clothing company Patagonia offers organic cotton jeans. Hemp is the most optimal material with which to make jeans, but few hemp jeans are available. You can find some at Hempest.

A Japanese company is making jeans out of a blend of sugar cane and selvage denim. The cane used is Sweet Sorghum, otherwise known as Sweet Millet. It’s a type of grass grown all over the world for making a molasses-like syrup and animal feed. The Sugarcane jeans that feature this fiber have a faint sweet smell and may have occasional woody tufts poking out of the fabric! Some of the jeans are dyed with persimmon.

They are available from: Rakuten (Japan), Saddlemen (Japan). They can also be found at Amazon.

See also these hemp jeans and another version, and jeans dyed with natural indigo, like the original ones were.

Almost all jeans are made of cotton today, because, at the time the cotton gin was invented, nobody has the technology to process the tough fibers of hemp into a soft fabric. Hemp grew better than cotton in poorer soil conditions, and didn’t require pesticides, but it was discarded in those early days.

Today we have the technology to process hemp into a very soft but tough material, making it the optimal fiber for jean production. There’s no reason why all jeans shouldn’t be made of hemp.

Hempest has a good selection of men’s and women’s hemp pants, including jeans.

Pictured here is IPath’s hemp jeans. They are available for around $70 from Amazon and Utility Board Supply.