For your reading pleasure

Here is a link that might be useful: more then you may care to know

I'd bet microfiber is easier on the environment from beginning to end than cotton.

...which is not what you asked.

Fori,

Interesting comment, why do you say they are easier on the environment? I am curious, not being argumentative, as microfiber cloths are made from petrochemicals and aren't biodegradable.

Is it that you use less cleaning chemicals or that they last longer?

Cotton production is extremely resource intensive, including using plenty of petrochemicals. It's often irrigated, smothered in pesticides, nailed with a chemical defoliant, harvested mechanically, and then production starts...

On the bright side, it can be recycled and it is biodegradable.

Microfibers are great because for one thing, they are lint-free. They can pick up lint in the washing machine, and never add fabric softener when laundering them.
I keep them until they are threadbare, then finish them off as shop rags.
Honestly can't imagine housecleaning without them. Wool and linen still have their place for some cleaning and polishing tasks. Nothing is better when giving waxed furniture the first buffing than a woolen rag (shining shoes too). And when I buff my waterloxed floor dry afetr cleaning with vinegar, a linen rag seems to pull a lot of embedded dirt out. The fibers would appear to have characteristics which suit them especially well for particular tasks.
Casey

cotton depletes the soil. Even in countries where it gets none of the benefits of modern science.

Cotton doesn't deplete the soil any more than any other non-leguminous crop.

Fla - that is very interesting; thank you. No way is it more than I want to know, just more than I have time for reading before I nod off!

Fori - possible; don't know really. Those calculations are so complicated! But I'm completely comfortable in agreeing with you that cotton is rather of a menace, often. Depends how, where, by whom it's grown though.