Eco-Fabrics: An Introduction

It would be great if thrift stores coordinated their intakes in order to sort and present their clothes better. The problem is that shops that promise a pleasant customer experience tend to have higher prices. And vice versa (see relevant blog post).

The truth of the matter is that second-hand will never be for everyone for every thing they need. Clothing degrades, styles change, and people like new things. It is important to take a look at the problems with how we make clothes now and solutions that are already being implemented.

So why are most fabrics environmentally damaging?

Nylon – non-biodegradable and energy-intensive. Creates nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 310 times more potent than CO2.

Polyester – non-biodegradable and energy intensive as well!  Polyester also requires lots of water for cooling and lubricants.

Rayon– made from wood pulp. Rayon is often made from water-hungry eucalyptus and is treated with harsh chemicals.

Cotton– Cotton uses 2.5% of the world’s cultivated land and 16% of the world’s insecticides.

In addition, dyeing is extremely water-intensive. Unfixed dye and dye fixatives (often heavy metals) wash out of garments and can end up in rivers.  Bleached fabrics and treated fabrics (easy care, crease resistant, etc.) also use harmful chemicals (which also end up in the water).

So, what is better?

Organic cotton– Organic cotton uses less water and doesn’t use the chemicals that harm workers, consumers, and ecosystems.

Hemp- Yes, I know I sound like a super hippie when I write this (perhaps I am?). Hemp produces 250% more fiber than cotton. It is easy to cultivate and, because it sheds it leaves throughout the growing season, hemp helps enrich the topsoil. Although I haven’t ever bought hemp clothing, the internet tells that hemp is soft and comfortable these days.

Bamboo- Bamboo is hypoallergenic, absorbent, fast-drying, fast-growing, and naturally anti-bacterial. There are concerns about the chemicals used in processing bamboo, but it is still better than conventional fabrics.

Linen- Linen, from flax, needs fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides than cotton, so it is a better (but not the best) option.

From my end, I’ll keep buying and supporting second-hand clothing. The fabrics from used clothes have done 0 environmental damage (on their journey from the last owner to me) and are cheaper than sustainable fabric options. But if you do want something new, watch out for organic fabrics, hemp, bamboo, and linen.

Sources

1. Details on conventional fabrics – http://www.greenchoices.org/green-living/clothes/environmental-impacts
2. Details on sustainable fabrics- http://www.greenchoices.org/green-living/clothes/more-sustainable-fabrics
3. Information on hemp  –http://www.earthfriendlygoods.com/index.php?dispatch=pages.view&page_id=13

4. Why cotton is so harmful- http://rodaleinstitute.org/chemical-cotton/
5. Organic Cotton- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-dietz/organic-cotton-sustainable-fashion_b_3562788.html

Additional

• Here’s just a cool video that shows how fabric is made. It’s a pretty involved and fascinating process.

Quite Caffeinated: Round 2. Direct Trade

(this post is a follow-along to a post I wrote about the problems with Fair Trade, see it here.)

Overall kindtrade score: Depends on the roasters

Overall affordability score: $$$$

The largest problem with the coffee supply chain is that it is looong. By the time you get your coffee, a chain of middle men has taken their cut without providing much value. My interest is in getting more money in the hands of farmers, especially farmers that produce their products in an environmentally responsible way. So today I’d like to look at one solution: Direct Trade coffee.

Coffee cherries

Three-degrees of separation:    The Farmer. The Roaster. You.

Direct Trade, a term coined by Intelligentsia and Counter Culture Coffee, refers to roasters that buy coffee directly from growers. Direct Trade coffee prides itself on its high-quality, which allows it to charge a premium for its goods. This, in turn, has the potential to put more money into the pockets of growers. Some roasters make sure that they pay fair prices to the growers.

Pros:

1. Direct Trade coffee is often extremely high-quality coffee.
2. Direct Trade roasters often commit to paying farmers high prices.
3. Direct Trade roasters often visit their farmers directly, which means that the roasters (and the consumers)—and not the farmers— bear the cost of auditing.

Cons:

1. Direct Trade is not a centralized certification system, so each company has their own standards.
2. Direct Trade coffee tends to be much higher than comparable gourmet coffees.

On the supply side, Direct Trade is based on trust between the farmers and the roasters. On the demand side, Direct Trade is based on trust between the roasters and the consumers. Cutting out an outside certification scheme saves roasters and farmers money. Consumers are still paying a premium for coffee, but this premium is based on the coffee’s high-quality, not based on paying middle men. Some examples of Direct Trade roasters are:

• For instance, Intelligentsia Coffee pays its growers 25% more than the Fair Trade price (in addition to several other criteria you can find on their site). Intelligentsia sources coffee from multiple regions around world and ensures its growers comply with regulations by making monthly visits to each of its sites.
• Counter Culture Coffee launched their own third party certification, which is based around personal & direct communication with farmers, fair & sustainable price paid to farmers (at least $1.60/lb for green coffee), exceptional cup quality, and supply chain transparency.
• The Direct Trade Coffee Club (DTCC) takes a little bit of a different approach. DTCC sources all of its coffee from the Huehuetenango region of Guatemala and each of its coffee blends comes with a short blurb about the individual grower. DTCC has a commitment to environmental and economic sustainability. Unlike Intelligentsia, DTCC doesn’t have a list of its environmental and economic criteria (however there might be one buried in its blog).

There are a number of other companies that call themselves Direct Trade. Direct Trade is usually high quality coffee with environmental and financial standards of accountability.  Direct Trade coffee is only worth your buck if you a) value high-quality coffee and b) find a company whose standards match your own for what coffee sustainability should be.

Sources:

1. Direct Trade: http://www.ethicalcoffee.net/direct.html
2. NY Times profile on Direct Trade: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/dining/12coff.html?_r=0

What is KindTrade?

Ultimately, for me, kind trade is about people.

There are a few things I care deeply about:

1.    Sustainable and ethical clothes
2.    Sustainable and ethical fruits and vegetables.
3.    Sustainable and ethical fish

“Ethical” food and clothing is obviously important to the humane treatment of other people. To me, ethical means that a product’s value chain is free of child labor, poor working conditions, and forced labor.

But the “sustainable” part is equally as important for the proper treatment of people around the world. The world’s poorest are the most vulnerable to depletion of resources, such as fish and arable land. Many of the world’s poorest depend on fish protein for their primary source of animal protein. Many poor families live in areas with high rates of pollution or other toxins, either because of lower property values or lack of information. And finally, the poor are the ones who are most heavily impacted by increasingly severe weather cased by rising global temperatures.

What you wear and what you eat are some of the most important choices you make every day.

Invasive Species: Eat ‘em to beat ‘em? Or…?

I recently came across an article in Scientific American by Chef Bun Lai, which promoted the benefits of eating invasive species. The article described dishes with Asian shore crab, lion fish, and other invasive species in mouth watering detail. People have been eating these unwanted pests since at least the 1980’s as a means of control. Why wouldn’t they? It’s food you don’t have to grow, and it’s stuff you don’t really want in your backyard. Invasive species cost the U.S. $120 billion every year in herbicides, pesticides, and the like.

Lionfish, an invasive species on the Florida coast since the 1980s

Despite the longevity, this was a new idea to me. As I searched online, I found a multitude of initiatives to eat invasive species and about as many articles discussing the negative impacts of these campaigns. Developing a market for invasive species can provide incentives to keep these species in the area and spread them to new areas. An invasive species, as in the case of the wild boar in Hawaii, can also become a cultural icon if it becomes ingrained in the regional cuisine.  Additionally, invasive species have no natural predators and have high reproductive rates. Promoting the idea that eating invasive species is a solution can also lead people to believe that eating invasive species is all that is needed to take care of a species.

After reading these articles, I am still a fan of eating invasive species, but I think we need to be careful how we market them. “Eat ‘em to beat ‘em” is catchy (…and it rhymes), but most species cannot be contained by eating them alone. Instead of propagating the idea that we can eat an invasive species out of existence, we need to focus on the fact that every calorie we consume of an invasive species is a calorie that benefits our local ecosystem instead of harming it.

Sources:

1. http://web.utk.edu/~mnunez/Nunez_etal_eating_invasives.pdf
2. http://ensia.com/voices/why-eating-invasive-species-is-a-bad-idea/
3. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-would-nature-do/invasive-species-if-you-can-t-beat-em-eat-em
4. Image source: http://www.nmsfocean.org/files/lionfish2_credit_noaa.jpg

Refashion: The Market Solution to Our Clothing Problem

Refashion is the act of taking used clothing and remaking it into something new.
I believe that  refashion is the market solution to our clothing problem.

Album Cover for Macklemore’s Thrift Shop

It is undeniable- we have a clothing problem. Our clothes are produced cheaply in poor working conditions. Also, because clothing is so inexpensive, we run through a lot of clothing… very quickly. Americans discard about 10.5 million tons of clothing a year.
There are a few clothing challenges that refashion can help solve.

Used clothing has an image problem. Because cheap clothing is so readily available, many people don’t think of second-hand stores as a reliable clothing source. We think of second hand shops as places for occasional “thrift store finds” or as a source for cheap, but poor quality clothing. Used clothing stores most likely conjure up images of either endless racks of poorly organized donations or images of stuffy shops with out-of-fashion items. In an age of convenience, used clothing commits the cardinal sin of being inconvenient. Obviously, secondhand shops can be more careful with their stocking choices and neat in their displays– and some are–, but secondhand does suffer from a serious image problem.

What refashion can do: Refashion is sexy. Refashion turns second hand clothing from “something that someone else didn’t want” into something new. The fact that refashion is tailored to the customer means that people expect that they will be able to get everything that they need in a refashion shop. In a secondhand shop, the items on the shelves are a function of what people donated. In a refashion shop, the items on the shelves are curated for a pleasant customer experience.

Our fabrics last longer than our fashions. People get rid of some clothes because they are worn out. Other items, they get rid of because they are tired of them or the items are out-of-fashion. Many items, especially things like suits and dresses, are worn very infrequently, and end up losing their fashion edge long before they start to fray.

What refashion can do: this one is obvious. Refashion can take old clothes and make them fit with current fashions.

There is a lack of awareness about “our clothing problem,” as I call it. Clothing is cheap- we don’t really have to think twice about buying more. Also, we only recycle or donate 15% of all our used textiles, which is woefully low. In fact, textiles have one of the lowest recycling rates of any reusable material.

What refashion can do: get people thinking. Traditional awareness campaigns tell people what is wrong and what they should be doing. These are useful tools, however it is an uphill battle to get people to pay attention. Refashion is a trendy invitation to get people thinking about where their clothes come from and where they are going.

The truth is that we have enough used clothing to service everyone’s need, and refashion may not ever be able to clothe everyone. But refashion can drive people to

• Buy secondhand clothing (refashion or otherwise)
• Be more judicious in their purchases
• Donate their used clothes
• View secondhand clothing as a powerful and meaningful lifestyle choice.

Time for some rebranding. 🙂

Sources:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/where-does-discarded-clothing-go/374613/