Organic_Clothing

Ethical Shopping & Fair Trade

This is the second in our series "Ethical Shopping, Ethical Clothing."  We are deeply interested in what moves someone to wear natural, organic and sustainable clothing. After surveying hundreds of people, several factors standout as the major motivating factors: personal health, health of the environment, healthy styling and superior feel of organic fabrics, and ethical considerations.

The conventional garment industry is not only a major source of environmental pollution, but it is also a significant source of social pollution and global misery. In the last posting we explored the factors giving rise to garment sweatshops and how becoming informed is the first step in combating the problem. Now we will look at the role of ethical shopping for positive change in the garment and fashion industry.

Simply, ‘ethical shopping’ is buying products and services that are ethically made by companies and countries acting ethically. What might be unethical to one person, such as the use of leather in shoes and accessories, might not be unethical to another while both might agree that the use of fur apparel crosses an ethical line. Or they might not agree. What is important is that everyone become informed about the issues and then forms their own ethical opinions.

The three corners of the ethical shopping triangle are human rights, animal welfare, and the environment. Almost all socially responsible shopping considerations will concern ethics over one of these issues. Human rights considerations include desperately low paying and unhealthy sweatshop conditions, discrimination against women, races, or sexual orientation, and exploitive child labor. Animal welfare considerations include inhumane treatment of animals used in the production and testing of products. Environmental issues include any growing and manufacturing practices which pollute and damage the environment and the use of genetically modified fibers such as cotton and soy.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, (PETA), is well known for slopping paint on the fur coats of the rich and famous, disrupting fashion shows to protest the use of furs and animals skins for fashion, and even for recently dusting Paris Hilton with flour while she was walking next to fashionista designer Julien MacDonald. PETA explained that they were attempting to coat Julien MacDonald in flour to “help him rise to the occasion and forsake fur once and for all.”

Some extend ethical treatment to all life – animals and insects – and advocate renouncing the use of silk in clothing. Silk is manufactured by boiling the cocoon created by the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori. Unfortunately, the silkworm larvae are still inside the cocoons and alive when they are thrown into the boiling water. It’s up to each of us to decide where our ethical edges and limits are.

The two tools of the ethical shopper are positive shopping (supporting companies and buying ethically-produced goods and services) and negative shopping (boycotting companies and refusing to buy goods that are not ethically-produced or by companies that have unethical business practices). When given the choice between two garments of comparable quality and style, people will generally purchase what is least expensive. For the ethical shopper, the choice is a little more complicated and involves the ethical reputation of the company, the fabrics used such as organic v. conventional, the store selling the garment such as Ecolution v. Wal-Marts, and even the animal husbandry practices of the country where wool used in the garment came from. A survey in 1996 revealed that over 70% of shoppers would refuse to buy a shirt if they knew that it was made by exploited child labor. A socially responsible shopper is an informed shopper who supports the goals of social, humanitarian and environmental responsibility.

Realistically, though, there just aren’t enough hours for each of us to do the research needed to stay informed about all the products, companies, countries and issues so we, as consumers, need help to see our ways through the seas of information overload. One of those helpful lighthouses is the Fair Trade label.

Fair trade programs were designed to guarantee fair and stable prices, decent and safe working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and agricultural workers in developing countries. Fair trade programs have been established for food stuffs such as coffee, cocoa, bananas, spices and tea and more than a 1000 other products. Fair trade programs also offer financing to small farmers and farming co-ops and help them establish long term marketing and trade relationships. A premium is included in the product price paid to the farmers to help finance community improvement projects such as schools, healthcare, and water and sanitation. Fair trade programs have also been established to workers on large tea plantations to guarantee that workers receive a fair and just wage and that they are able to join labor unions and work under safe conditions. Fair trade programs are slowly being expanded to include cotton for the garment industry, cut flowers and ornamental plants, and the manufacturing of sport balls.

The concept for fair trade labeling was developed in the Netherlands in the late 1980’s by Max Havelaar and coffee grown in Mexico was the first product to receive a fair trade label certifying that the farmers received a fair price for their product. Today, a growing movement of national and international organizations promotes fair trade policies, setting standards, and certifying products for compliance. The large fair trade organizations include:

• The International Federation of Alternative Trade (IFAT) – a coalition of more than 70 Alternative Trade Organizations (ATOs) from more than 30 nations working with small handicraft and agricultural producer organizations in developing countries.
• The European Fair Trade Association (EFTA) – an association of 11 fair trade organizations in 9 European countries. European countries lead the world in their concern and commitment to fair trade. EFTA members import from over 550 producer groups in 44 countries.
• The Fairtrade Labeling Organization International (FLO) – comprised of fair trade organizations in 19 countries and sets international standards for fair trade products and monitors the compliance by the growers and producers.
• TransFair USA – The US member of FLO and the only third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the US.

Consumer groups have been successful in encouraging large corporations to use fair trade-certified products. Think Starbucks, which has increased the amount of fair trade coffees it carries but still resists converting more of their coffees to fair trade. Starbucks liberally greenwashes their purchasing policies to appear more supportive of fair trade.

The ethical shopper needs to remember a few important points, though, when considering garments that carry a Fair Trade label.

One, apparel with a Fair Trade label is not necessarily organic or eco-friendly. Most fair trade organizations encourage, but do not require, that farmers and growers use organic and sustainable farming practices.

Two, a Fair Trade label does not guarantee that a garment was not made under sweatshop conditions. The Fair Trade label only certifies that the cotton was grown under fair trade conditions and does not cover the apparel manufacturing process. Fair trade policies attempt to make the entire supply chain more transparent. Each processor of fair trade cotton – from the cotton ginner, through the yarn spinner, knitter, weaver, dyer, and garment manufacturer – is required to submit independent documentation regarding the efforts they are making to comply with fair labor standards. Fair trade cotton complements the work of other organizations, such as the Clean Clothes Campaign, Labour Behind the Label (which is the UK organization for the Clean Clothes Campaign) and the Fair Wear Foundation, to improve the conditions for all workers in the garment industry supply chain.

Three, a Fair Trade label does not guarantee that the garment was manufactured under environmentally-friendly and healthy processes. It also does not guarantee that the manufacturing process used eco-friendly low-impact dyes and did not use harsh and toxic chemicals during the manufacturing and finishing processes. The garment manufacturing supply chains are still notoriously cloudy and non-transparent, especially in China.

So, what’s the Ethical Shopper to do? As always, be informed. Research the issues, organizations and companies. Avoid shopping at the stores identified by the sweatshop watch groups as supporting sweatshops. Shop at stores which offer ethically manufactured clothing. Almost all organic clothing apparel is ethically grown and manufactured because Fair Trade is a cornerstone of the organic industry. Fair Trade certification insures that the product was grown and produced under conditions which respect the environment and the health, safety, and rights of the workers to a decent and fair wage.  Here are some examples of clothing co-ops using fair trade principals and practices to improve the quality of life in communities around the world.

Joe Turner and the Freedom Clothing Project, a not-for-profit garment manufacturing co-operative, is attempting to bring much-needed work to some of the estimated 500 clothing manufacturers in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and to assist them in finding new markets for their products.  Their first garments are simple, well-made tee shirts. The Freedom Clothing Project uses organic cotton and provides healthy and environmentally friendly working conditions to these very poor but capable garment workers whose lands have been ravished by years of war and strife. The world community can help bring peace to this troubled region by breaking the poverty that breeds extremism and desperation.

Many indigenous workers in developing countries have banded together to form co-ops to grow and manufacture their goods and products. Indigenous Designs is a progressive wholesale clothing company with a mission to provide training, sustainable employment, and fair wages for local and mountain-dwelling weavers, knitters and textile artisans in the mountains of Peru and Ecuador. Indigenous Designs works with more than 200 knitting and hand-looming co-op groups comprised mostly of peoples indigenous to their area.

After the decimation of the U.S. garment manufacturing industry through outsourced apparel manufacturing to low-cost manufacturing in developing countries, Maggie’s Organics helped develop Maquiladora Mujeres, a worker-owned cooperative in Nueva Vida, Nicaragua. Maggie’s Organics, a pioneer in developing the organic clothing market, has been dedicated to developing cooperative partnerships with workers who have a stake in their own future and to Fair Trade practices.

Some organic clothing manufacturers such as Earth Creations and Blue Canoe have created highly ethical and successful apparel operations by doing their own apparel manufacturing within the U.S. They have demonstrated that it is possible to successfully manufacture purely beautiful clothing onshore.

The World Wide Web is a handy tool and a little time roaming around can be helpful. Look for Fair Trade and Certified Organic fiber labels. Find manufacturers and retailers that you can trust and ask them questions until you are satisfied that their garments meet your ethical, environmental and personal health concerns. And contact us if you have other comments, questions or concerns.

Become informed. Shop ethically. Dress beautifully.  Enjoy.

Michael
LotusOrganics.com
Purely Beautiful, Healthy & Ethichal Clothing

Garment Industry's Social Pollution

This is the first in our series on "Ethical Shopping, Ethical Clothes."  In previous posts, we documented the role of the conventional garment manufacturing industry in the poisoning of our planet’s physical environment. Of equal importance is the often overlooked poisoning of social systems from global garment industry sweatshops. Sweatshops have a long and ignoble history. The beginning of the Industrial Revolution is largely credited with ushering in sweatshops, but the sad reality is that it is a small step from physical slavery to the economic slavery of sweatshops.

In the 1880’s, poor European immigrants desperate for work began filling the large cities in America. With the swelling of the population and the destruction of the garment industry in the South after the Civil War, there was a large demand for cheap garments to clothe the urban masses and the westward expansion. Garment sewing businesses began to spring up in the East Coast cities fueled by the escalating demand for cheap clothing and the swelling supply of recent immigrants desperate for jobs and willing to work long hours under cruel conditions. Fierce competition for business among shop owners kept pay low and working conditions dismal in overcrowded, poorly lit, and inadequately ventilated tenements and factory buildings. Calling these low-cost, labor-intensive garment manufacturing operations “sweatshops” is a polite way to describe the conditions. It was a bare subsistence life that ensnared many urban poor but especially children and women.  Many lives of sweatshop laborers were cut short by malnutrition, disease and exhaustion. The oppressive atrocities forced upon many in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were child labor, long hours, low wages, unpaid work, firings with no notice and no severance pay while working in conditions that were frigidly cold in the winter, sickly hot and humid in the summer, and always filthy, smelly, loud, and unsafe.

The public’s social and political outrage against garment sweatshops began on March 25, 1911 when a fire erupted in the 10-story Asch Building in NYC. The 8^th and 9^th floors housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Co., a garment sweatshop which made a popular style of women's clothing. Five hundred sweatshop workers, mostly young women between the ages of 15 and 25 who immigrated from Europe and worked more than 50 hours per week for $6, were trapped in the fiery holocaust.  146 sweatshop workers died locked in the burning building or by jumping to their death. The nation’s social consciousness was shocked as details of the fire and the unsafe and brutal working conditions in sweatshops across the country were forced into public awareness. This was the moment that social and political activists started working to eliminate sweatshop conditions in all working environments, not just the garment industry.

Many feel that the culmination of this movement was the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. As part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Fair Labor Standards Act established a minimum wage for industrial workers that applied throughout the United States, the principle of the 40-hour week with time and a half for overtime, and a minimum working age for most occupations.  It also marks the arrival of government regulations in private business labor practices.

End of story? A nasty social ill cured? Well … no. During the 1950s and ‘60s, the term “sweatshops” came to simply mean a lousy work environment. A growing economy, improved state and federal labor regulations and enforcement, reduced immigration rates of poor and uneducated immigrants, and increased sensitivity to labor issues removed many of the factors that contribute to the creation of sweatshops. In the early 1970’s with the end of the Vietnam War, masses of poor immigrants – especially from Asia – began to flood into the U.S. Rising domestic and international demand for U.S. apparel and a cheap immigrant labor force once again fueled the impetus for sweatshops.

Although sweatshops had never been eradicated in the U.S., the myth that they were a social ill from the past was exploded on August 2, 1995, when police raided a seven-apartment complex fenced with chain link and razor wire in El Monte, California. Police freed 72 illegal Thai immigrants who were being held in captivity and forced to work in an illegal garment sweatshop. The seven operators of the clandestine garment sweatshop were arrested and later convicted on charges of conspiracy, indentured servitude and harboring illegal immigrants. They admitted running the garment sweatshop from 1989 to 1995 with a captive work force that they worked up to 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 70¢ an hour.

As civilization moved into the 21^st century, many hoped that the garment industry had evolved past enslaving our fellow workers in sweatshop conditions. We were sadly mistaken. With the rush to globalization, the rise of labor costs in the U.S., and the subsequent collapse of the garment manufacturing industry in the U.S., we have simply outsourced sweatshops to developing countries were wages are low and the supply of poor, uneducated laborers – many of whom are children – is plentiful.

The mushrooming spread of garment sweatshops in developing countries has been emboldened by diverse national and international factors: international trade agreements such as NAFTA, the 9/11 tragedy and the subsequent hardening of immigration into the U.S., depressed international cotton prices largely due to cushy U.S. government subsidies to large American corporate cotton farms, and a mild economic recession across the developed countries in the early 2000’s. The rise of sweatshops in developing countries has also been fueled by the global thirst for cheap apparel as consumers in Western countries have tightened their credit cards while looking for discount prices. Also, large U.S. retail chains cast aside ethics in their shortsighted frenzy to improve their profitability by squeezing manufacturing costs.

In recent years, a number of large American clothing chains have been accused of purchasing directly and indirectly from sweatshop garment manufacturers internationally. Nike, B.V.F. Apparel Manufacturing in Haiti that produces clothing for Disney stores, Adidas, New Balance, Wal-Mart, Kathie Lee, Reebok, Sears, J.C. Penney, The Limited, Kmart, Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap (which includes Old Navy and Banana Republic) have been implicated in supporting sweatshop conditions in developing countries around the world. The fact is that the number of garments purchased by American consumers has increased 73% between 1996 and 2001, while apparel prices have fallen 10% over the past decade. “Always Low Prices” comes largely at the expense of poor, uneducated garment workers who have been trapped in a system of servitude.

The conventional garment industry is one of the most globalized industries and is characterized by excessive working hours, low wages, sexual harassment, discrimination, hazardous conditions, and violations of freedom of association. The most vulnerable – the poor, uneducated women and children – are the most likely to become caught in the conventional garment manufacturing web.

What can you do? Plenty! There are two easy actions that we can all take. One: become informed. There are some excellent organizations that have proven effective in exposing the gray world of global sweatshops and the companies that support them.

• SweatShopWatch.org – “Sweatshop Watch serves low-wage workers nationally and globally, with a focus on eliminating sweatshop exploitation in California's garment industry. We believe that workers should earn a living wage in a safe, decent work environment, and that those responsible for the exploitation of sweatshop workers must be held accountable.”
• UNITEHERE.org – Their mission is to organize and unionize garment and textile workers and hotel service workers.
• CorpWatch.org – A watch dog organization to monitor the ethical labor behavior of corporations worldwide.
• GlobalExchange.org – “A membership-based international human rights organization dedicated to promoting social, economic and environmental justice around the world.      Since our founding in 1988, we have successfully increased public awareness of root causes of injustice while building international partnerships and mobilizing for change.”
• United Students Against Sweatshops – “An international student movement fighting for sweatshop-free labor conditions and workers' rights. We believe that university standards should be brought in line with those of its students who demand that their school's logo is      emblazoned on clothing made in decent working conditions. We have fought for these beliefs by demanding that our universities adopt ethically and legally strong codes of conduct, full public disclosure of company information and truly independent verification systems to ensure that sweatshop conditions are not happening. Ultimately, we are using our power as students to affect the larger industry that thrives in secrecy, exploitation, and the power relations of a flawed system.”
• Coop America’s Sweatshop Program – Committed to forming economic action to end      sweatshops and forced child labor. Their Guide to Ending Sweatshops is an excellent resource.

In our next posting, we will discuss ethical shopping, the second action that we can all take to reduce the cruel demand for sweatshops.

Become informed. Shop ethically. Enjoy.

Michael
LotusOrganics.com
Purely Beautiful & Healthy Clothing

ICInyc Redux

In our last posting, we mentioned the ICInyc eco-event for the eco-elite in New York (for delicious inside pics visit RemyC and the fiftyRX3 blog for "perusing the crossroads of style and sustainability") and we discussed briefly the three eco-entrepreneurs (Summer Rayne Oaks, Chuck Heckman, and Josh Dorfman), but we forgot to mention the other two presenters - Treehugger.com and Lü Magazine.

Treehugger.com is a hugely popular “green” blog and useful ecommercial that is dedicated to reporting on all products that have a modern aesthetic and are environmentally responsible. The focus of Treehugger.com is not so much on gizmos for their own sake as it is on environmental products that provide sustainable and eco-friendly solutions. A global team of about 18 writers in many major international cities provide the eco-product news and reviews while Graham Hill, who started Treehugger.com in July 2004, attempts to orchestrate the direction from wherever he happens to be around the world. Graham Hill has stated that his goal is to help push sustainability into the mainstream of public awareness and Treehugger.com is an excellent low-emissions, green vehicle to drive this effort.

Lü magazine is perhaps more properly written as the Chinese character meaning “green”. The creative refection of Remy Chevalier, Lü is a green fashion magazine that is still, and perhaps will always be, a gestation-in-progress. The air surrounding Remy Chevalier must be charged with ideas and eclectic tangent quarks which merge in and out of our normal reality. Remy has dubbed Lü as the Viridian magazine of fashion and design.

The edgy Viridian design movement is an interesting story.  It was founded by artist, designer and eco-futurist Bruce Sterling and is a word play based on a durable bluish-green pigment coming from the Latin word viridis for green.   In its most pedestrian definition, Viridian design is environmentally sustainable design that can recreate a new ethic of sustainable communion and community on this planet. Or as a Viridian product commandment asks "What if Green Design Were Just Good Design."  The Viridian design movement is centered around the Greenhouse Effect and overcoming society’s addiction to fossil fuels and our substance-abuse problem with carbon dioxide. Bruce Sterling’s poetically sobering Viridian Manifesto should be required reading by everyone concerned about the environmental future of our planet. If they weren't so serious, the Viridian design movement would be the Merry Pranksters of the eco-movement.

But back to Remy who has been championing a rangy variety of environmental and green social efforts for many years.  Remy Chevalier has a long, long history with the fashion industry elite. Born in the US but raised in Paris, Remy’s childhood playgrounds were the photography studios of Elle magazine where Remy’s father was a dominant creative force and in the home and parties of Helene Lazareff, Elle’s founder and domineering editor. Remy has pieced together a troubling autobiographical sketch of these years in his e-memoirs, Elle on Earth. Think what you like, it is a fascinating read – as is his article “How Green Is your Catwalk” about the suppression of fashion models who had environmental concerns by designers and modeling agencies in the 80’s and 90’s. Speaking of a Victoria’s Secrets fashion gala in NYC, Remy sums it up with “it’s not easy being green when you are dressed in feathers and treated like a toy.”

By supporting the environmental efforts of eco-fashion designers like Katharine E. Hamnet, Linda Loudermilk, and Deborah Lindquist, and eco-models like Summer Rayne Oakes and by exposing the glitzy destruction lavished upon the earth by the conventional fashion and garment industries, perhaps we can increase the awareness of the need for positive change.

Enjoy.

Michael
LotusOrganics.com
Purely Beautiful & Healthy Clothing

When It Raynes, ICI Pours

Maybe your eco-social secretary was showing solidarity by Marching with the Penguins and was unable to get you tickets for the NYC eco-event of the season, but last Wednesday, January 26, at Libation – aujourd’hui hotspot in Manhattan’s trendy Lower East Side – was the scene to be seen at the first ICInyc. Originally planned as an intimate flocking for the NYC eco-conscious elite 400, the ICInyc gathering quickly warmed up to an estimated 1,400 of the NYC eco-striving.

ICI is, oddly enough, not an acronym but simply chosen because it is French for “here” as in “If you are not at this STYLE+SUSTAINABILITY event, then you are not ‘ici.’” A newly-emerging branding and consultancy company, ICI is the green dream of eco-entrepreneurs Chuck Heckman, Josh Dorfman (the Lazy Environmentalist Founder and CEO of Vivavi), and Summer Rayne Oaks. The intent of ICI is to position brands and companies on the “nexus of style + sustainability” and their companies are their first beneficiaries.

Chuck Heckman is the president and designer for the Delano Collection, which promotes itself as being the home of luxury lifestyle brands ranging from sophisticated apparel to furniture and homeware. The Delano Collection still contains only one item of organic clothing, a white wool coat, which was also included in the marketing efforts of the Organic Wool Network. (See our blog entry on the Organic Wool Network.)

Summer Rayne Oaks is well-known within eco-fashion circles as a model and founder of her own branding and consultancy company, SRO llc, which uses her image and contacts as a model to promote eco-fashion and sustainability. Summer Rayne Oaks swept through the ICInyc event wearing what looks like a Deborah Lindquist original. Heckman, Summer and Dorfman are pictured here. One eco-elite reveler, probably after imbibing a few too many hi-octane organic drinks being served, dubbed her outfit “Ecorella – Queen of the Eco Galaxy.”

ICInyc was the first eco-event promoted by the newly formed ICI branding and consultancy company. Those fortunate elite who were there gushed that the eco-event at the hip bar was awash in eco-glamour, eco-talk, imported organic chocolates from Green & Blacks, imported organic wines from Organic Vintners, and organic vodka from Orange V. “Organic vodka” sounds like a wee bit of a theological oxymoron if images of purity, health and the wholeness of consciousness arise when you think of organic.  Maybe next year there will be organic tobacco cigarillos.

As a retailer, I am totally green with envy at the marketing brilliance in using environmental issues to promote social change and consumerism. As an environmental and organic advocate for three decades, I am a little green with concern that the underlying message of environmental responsibility is becoming overshadowed by the venue – the medium – in which it is being communicated. Or as Marshall McLuhan pointed out so many years ago “the medium is the message.”

Many eco-entrepreneurs are to be applauded for their efforts to merge environment fervor and eco-conscious commercialism, but we must all be vigilant that the real message of environmentalism and wholeness does not become lost in the marketing. Speaking about consumer motivations and the trend of ethical consumerism, especially in the fashion industry, Thomas Busuttil, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at PPR, the retail and luxury goods company which owns Gucci group, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and the Balenciaga brands, was hauntingly candid when he said “Will it be sustainable, durable behavior that will last, or is it just something trendy right now? For me, it’s still too early to answer that question.”

The answer will depend upon the commitment of each of us.

Enjoy ... and Act!

Michael
LotusOrganic.com
Purely Beautiful & Healthy Clothing