Organic_Clothing

Green Dry Cleaning

Let’s imagine that after a full schedule of Earth Day events – maybe you attend the UC San Diego Green Campus Program on the UCSD campus or the Miami Beach Earth Day Expos 2006 – you decide afterwards to go out for an evening of eco-clubbing. After imbibing on a few high octane eco-drinks mixed with organic whisky from The Organic Spirits Company … and certified by the Soil Association, the UK’s premier certifier of organic produce … you lurch toward the dance floor, stumble over a table and another eco-reveler accidentally pours an organic and biodynamic Frey Vineyards organic Syrah 2004 wine (“opulent nose, fragrant with spice and toasty oak notes; Rhone-style wine with a pleasing finish and heavy legs”) all over your Deborah Lindquist Wool Tweed Bustier with Feather Trim ($440) or Edun Pieced Camelot Shirt ($155).

Late the next morning, you blearily sip your organic, shade-grown Kalani Organic Coffee and dwell in eco Woody Allen-esque guilt about the incongruities of trying to establish health and wholeness in the environment while abusing the health and wholeness of your own consciousness, when all of a sudden you have the epiphany that you had better do something about that wine stain before it becomes a permanent part of the fabric motif. You realize that you are not up to the task to deal with it so the only solution is the dry cleaners … but what kind of dry cleaners?

Conventional dry cleaners are a horribly toxic lot using chemicals that are potentially nasty to the environment and the health of dry cleaning workers, people living near dry cleaners and customers wearing clothing just back from the dry cleaners. Here’s the green scoop on  organic dry cleaning.

A Short History on Dry Cleaning: Dry cleaning is not really “dry” but uses a toxic chemical liquid solution in industrial washing machines to gently agitate and lift stains and dirt from clothing in a manner similar to a home washing machine. The dry cleaning process originated in France in 1825 and was discovered by accident when a worker in a cleaning factory spilled lamp oil, which is a petroleum-based solvent, on a soiled tablecloth. When the table cloth dried, Viola! the stains were gone and a new industry emerged. The new cleaning method was called dry because it used turpentine and kerosene and not “wet” water. Within a few years, they started using benzene and gasoline, which were more refined and had fewer industrial petroleum impurities. These great advances in cleaning had the slight drawback of the solvents being highly flammable. More than one early dry cleaning shop burst into flame or was blown out of the neighborhood. Oh, yes … the clothes also stank like a gas tank after being cleaned.

Over the years, less explosive petroleum-based solvents were introduced and then in 1928, a new almost odorless, petroleum-based solvent call Stoddard Solvent swept the dry cleaning industry. With a much higher flashpoint making it less explosive and flammable, Stoddard Solvent really cleaned up, but dry cleaning fires were still all too common.

In the early 1900s, chemists were discovering how to synthesize chlorinated hydrocarbons. These nonflammable solvents quickly found their way into dry cleaning shops. Carbon tetrachloride was the early contender but it was highly toxic and had the unfortunate side effect of corroding metals and textiles. But, science marches on and on and by the 1950s, carbon tetrachloride was being replaced by tetrachloroethylene which is a chlorinated hydrocarbon more commonly known as perchloroethylene (C2CL4 or PERC).

PERC Health Risks: Today, about 90% of the dry cleaners in the U.S. use PERC, a colorless, clear liquid with that peculiar dry cleaning odor. Although PERC is less flammable and doesn’t cause dry cleaning establishments to burst into flames, it does have significant health risks. If a fire were to occur in one of the 90% of dry cleaning facilities that uses PERC, high temperatures will cause PERC to decompose into hydrogen chloride and phosgene gases (also known as Carbonyl Chloride).  The Occupational Safety & Healthy Administration (OSHA) of the U.S. Department of Labor warns that chronic exposure by skin contact to hydrogen chloride can cause dermatitis, photosensitization, and dental discoloration and phosgene gas in concentrated dosages is highly toxic, destructive to the respiratory system, and was used as a chemical weapon in World War I.

Respiratory exposure to “high” levels of PERC, even for brief periods, can cause depression of the central nervous system, damage to the liver and kidneys, impaired memory, fatigue, nausea, confusion, dizziness, headaches, drowsiness, and eye, nose and throat irritation. Skin exposure to PERC can cause dry, scaly, and cracked dermatitis. The degree of health risk from PERC exposure depends upon the concentration of PERC, how long the exposure lasts, and the individual’s sensitivity to chemical toxins.

Studies conducted by the National Cancer Institute, the National Toxicology Program and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established PERC as a potential carcinogen and the EPA regulates PERC as a hazardous air pollutant. PERC enters the body when breathed in with air contaminated with PERC or when consumed with PERC-contaminated food or water. Once in the body, PERC can remain stored in fatty tissue.

Of course, workers in dry cleaning shops are at greatest risk. Because PERC can travel through floor, ceiling and wall materials, people living near or co-located in the same building as dry cleaners have also reported respiratory, skin and neurological problems.

PERC Environmental Risks:  PERC is also environmentally very unfriendly and when improperly handled can create health and environmental risks in the atmosphere, soil, groundwater, drinking water, and waterways threatening many forms of life. Small amounts of PERC have been shown to be toxic to some aquatic animals where it is stored in their fatty tissues. Small amounts of PERC contaminating soil or irrigation water can also damage or kill many kinds of plants.

Offenders & Culprits: Older dry cleaning shops have traditionally been the worst culprits for PERC dry cleaning pollution. Old machines, leaky pipes, inadequate equipment maintenance, and poor cleaning procedures and processes are responsible for the majority of the PERC pollution. It can escape from older dry cleaning machines and during waste disposal to contaminate and pollute the air and ground water. Most of the PERC used during dry cleaning escapes into the outdoor air through open windows, vents and air-conditioning systems. Some older dry cleaning establishments may still vent PERC fumes directly into the outdoors. When released into the atmosphere, PERC can take several weeks before it decomposes and breaks down into smaller molecules, some of which are also toxic and some are implicated in the breakdown of the ozone layer. Some older dry cleaning shops still dispose of waste waters containing PERC from the dry cleaning machines by pouring it directly down drains into the public sewer systems.

Improvements in Dry Cleaning: Improvements in traditional PERC dry cleaning machines and processes have achievement worthy decreases in PERC pollution. New, fifth generation, dry-to-dry, non-vented, closed-loop, dry cleaning machines with carbon absorbers, refrigerated condensers and residual controls – especially  those designed in Germany – have greatly reduced the amount of PERC fluids and even vapors that are accidentally released into the environment. Of course, with features like these, the newest and most environmentally friendly dry cleaning machines must be expensive and beyond the budget of many small, family-owned, neighborhood dry cleaning shops.

The newer dry cleaning machines help capture and recycle much of the PERC used in the dry cleaning process. The EPA estimates there was a 66 percent reduction in emissions between 1990 and 1996. Still, the most recent figures available estimate 44,000 tons of PERC are released into the air yearly.

These new dry cleaning machines significantly reduce the health risks to dry cleaning shop workers and the environmental pollution, but some residual chemical cleaning toxins will still remain in the clothing and present health concerns to people with chemical sensitivities and with people who want to reduce the number of chemical toxins that come into close contact with their skin and respiratory system. Dr. Allan Magaziner, a family practice physician who specializes in environmental medicine, said people with chemical sensitivities often develop headaches, rashes and nausea when wearing dry cleaned garments. "We tell patients to take the plastic off their clothes and let them air out before putting them in their closets," said Dr. Magaziner. If you are chemically sensitive to PERC and conventional dry cleaned garments, you should hang them in a protected space outside your living space to remove the off-gassed PERC vapors as far away as possible.

There are alternatives to conventional dry cleaning but first it is helpful to examine why we can’t just chuck everything into the Laundromat washing machine like a fraternity freshman.

The “Dry Clean Only” Tag: To protect the quality, colors, size and garment life, manufacturers often recommend that some clothing only be dry cleaned. Water expands most natural and cellulose fibers (such as wool and cotton), while petroleum-based solvents (such as PERC) do not cause fibers to swell or change the fiber properties. Some natural fibers also become weaker when they expand in water and the agitating action during the wash cycle can distort the shape of garments by pulling and stretching fibers in new and unexpected ways. Drying is usually the most damaging process and when many natural and cellulose fibers dry, especially in high temperatures in a clothes dryer, after having been expanded during the wash cycle when they soak in water, they tend to wrinkle, lose their shape and shrink.

Dry cleaners are also specialists in knowing how to remove differing stains depending upon the type of fabric. The first step in the dry cleaning process is to sort garments according to fabrics and the degree to which the garment is soiled. Clothing with special stains are spot cleaned by hand with a variety of cleaning solvents depending upon the type of stain and the type of fabric. Many of the spotting solvents commonly used are even more toxic and harmful than PERC. Garments of similar fabrics and weights are then loaded into dry cleaning machines for cleaning and drying, and then pressed, folded or hung as requested.

Dry Cleaning Alternatives: New, healthier and more environmentally-friendly cleaning technologies are beginning to emerge, especially in Europe which always seems to be several steps ahead of the U.S. in health and environmental issues.

• Wet Cleaning. One of these “green” cleaning alternatives is wet cleaning – immersing the garments in water rather than chemical solvents such as PERC and then using specially designed wet cleaning, drying and stretching machines and processes to eliminate some of the problems which drove people to use dry cleaning rather than a conventional washing machine in the first place. Studies report that wet cleaning is able to safely clean 50% to 70% of “dry clean only” garments including leather, suede, woolens, silk, angora, cashmere, and rayons.
  
  Wet Cleaning uses specially formulated eco-friendly, biodegradable detergents and soaps. The temperatures of the water, the degree of agitation during the wash cycle, and the moisture content and temperatures during the drying are computer monitored and regulated to prevent shrinkage, damage to the fibers, loss and running of dyes, and loss of shape of the garment. Spotting and hand cleaning of stains is still an important step in the beginning of the cleaning process but green alternatives use cleaners made with enzymes, peptides (which are short chain amino acids), and eco-friendly detergents.
  
  Disadvantages of Wet Cleaning. Wet cleaning requires a thorough and extensive understanding of fabrics and state-of-the-art computerized wet cleaning machines to prevent transforming that favorite silk suit into lumpy, color-streaked, water-stained, couture chaos that only Mr. Blackwell could love. Also, wet cleaning detergents and additives usually are drained directly into the public sewers along with large quantities of wastewater. The potential environmental effects of some of the new wet cleaning detergents and additives are unknown. These are not products that you can buy at your local co-op or natural food store. Wet cleaning is a very water-intensive and labor-intensive process.
  
  Compared with dry cleaning, wet cleaning will also cause more fabric deterioration resulting in some felting, loss of luster, loss of shape, and color bleeding or color dulling.
  
  
• Silicon-based Cleaning. This is a new technology that is just being introduced in some cleaning chain stores such as Green Earth Cleaning that uses a clear, odorless, non-toxic, silicone-based solvent (known as a siloxane) rather than PERC. Green Earth Cleaning has partnered with General Electrics silicon division to develop the cleaning process and to create a patented, environmentally-safe detergent called J101 for the new silicon solvent.
  
  The patented Green Earth Cleaning System is reported to be environmentally safe. Accidental silicone solution spills decompose into sand, water and carbon dioxide and do not release Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) which are deleterious to the ozone layer. The silicone cleaning solution does not require regulation under any of the hazardous waste laws and it does not present the health risks that PERC and other petroleum-based cleaning solvents pose. People with chemical sensitivities to dry cleaning are reported to be able to use the silicon-based Green Earth Cleaning system without problems.
  
  Garments cleaned with the Green Earth Cleaning System are reported to leave clothes soft, fresh-smelling rather than chemically odorous, and colors are bright and clear. It seems that the silicone cleaning solutions also do not have the problems of shrinkage, fabric deterioration, and colors running or fading that wet cleaning can have.
  
  The International Fabricare Institute was contracted by Green Earth Cleaning to evaluate their silicon-based cleaning system and compare it with traditional PERC dry cleaning. Their study found that the Green Earth Cleaning system achieved a cleaning performance comparable to PERC dry cleaning in removing stains and soils across a wide spectrum of fabrics, maintaining color fastness and resisting dye staining, and maintaining fabric hand and feel.
  
  But the Green Earth Cleaning System is not all good news.  The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for silicone siloxanes, the primary cleaning solvent used in the Green Earth Cleaning System, states that silicone siloxanes may "generate formaldehyde at temperatures greater than 150 C (300 F)."  The MSDS also reports that female rats breathing very high levels (160 ppm) of decamthylcyclopentasiloxane for 24 months developed increased liver weights which returned to normal when the female rats were removed from high levels of decamthylcyclopentasiloxane. Typical levels of decamthylcyclopentasiloxane in industrial work environments are 5 to 10 ppm. Stephanie Riesenman reported on research conducted by the Silicones Environmental Health and Safety Council linking high levels of decamthylcyclopentasiloxane to "an increased prevalence of uterine tumors" in rats. 
  
  We have not tried the silicon solvent Green Earth Cleaning but we intend to. We hope that their cleaning lives up to the promise. If you have tried Green Earth Cleaning, please let us know. There are many Green Earth Cleaning franchises around the country that you can find here.
  
  
• Liquid Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Carbon dioxide is the stuff that we breathe out.  CO2 is a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas that occurs naturally in the environment. This carbon dioxide for garment cleaning has been pressurized until it becomes a liquid. Dry ice is solid or frozen carbon dioxide.  The production or use of liquid CO2 in this cleaning process does not create or release any greenhouse gases. Carbon Dioxide cleaning can be used for all “dry clean only” fabrics and it provides longer garment life, brighter colors and is odor-free. CO2 cleaning is non-toxic and has very low flammability or worker-related risks. It is claimed as being a highly energy efficient cleaning method.
  
  During cleaning, the liquid carbon dioxide readily permeates the soiled and stained fabrics to dissolve grease and oils. Other eco friendly surfactants – a material, such as soaps, that can greatly reduce the surface tension of water – are added to the cleaning process to remove water-soluble dirt and to enhance the cleaning process. Special detergents and spotting agents have been developed for CO2 garment cleaning and if you are visiting a garment cleaning shop that uses CO2 ask if their detergents and spotting agents are environmentally friendly.
  
  Several companies, such as Cool Clean Technologies, manufacture CO2 cleaning machines for the garment industry. The machines are more expensive than conventional dry cleaning machines and consumer cleaning costs might be slightly higher than for traditional dry cleaning but the benefit to the environment and the elimination of the health risks to workers, people living near cleaners, and the consumers easily justifies the difference in garment cleaning costs. Interestingly, CO2 cleaning technologies are also used to clean a wide variety of materials from silicon wafers used in computer chips to removing oil from vitamins to degreasing engine components.
• Hydrocarbons. Improved synthetic hydrocarbons such as ExxonMobil Chemical DF-2000 and Chevron Phillips Chemical EcoSolv are being positioned as a “green” alternative to PERC because they biodegrade within days when exposed to air, water and earth. About 15% of the estimated 25,000 dry cleaners in the U.S. have already switched from PERC to synthetic hydrocarbons. Today’s hydrocarbon cleaning agents are actually synthetic descendents of the early cleaning solvents which were made from petroleum distillates before PERC was manufactured. The new alternative hydrocarbons have a higher flash point of 142 degrees F so they are not as explosive as the earlier pre-PERC cleaners and they are odorless rather than smelling like gasoline. But, hydrocarbon solvents are still a Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) that will combine with other air pollutants (specifically oxides of nitrogen) to create ozone smog when it escapes into the air. The EPA and the Coalition for Clean Air have requested additional testing to determine the safety of hydrocarbon solvents to the environment and the toxicity to people.

Thinking of Using a New Alternative Cleaner? If you are considering switching to a new, healthier, greener cleaner, first interview the cleaners about what solvents they use for spotting and how eco-friendly their detergents and soaps are. Ask what they do with their used waste waters to insure that they do not contain any toxins when the waste water enters the public sewers. How do they control shrinkage and color bleeding? If they use any detergents, are they biodegradable and fragrance-free? And if you are using a new cleaner, take a test garment the first time. You really don’t want that new Deborah Lindquist wool tweed bustier with feathers to come back looking like a plucked chicken.

Clean Green & Enjoy.

Michael

More Fashion Quotes

More quotes about eco-fashion, sustainable clothing, and ethical clothing … along with a few fashion quotes from some of the fashion icons that have shaped the world of fashion. Eco-fashion has merged into mainstream thinking. The upcoming “green” issues of Elle and Vogue bless eco-fashion and sustainable clothing as a bonafide fashion trend … at least for the moment.  Eco-fashion represents the merging of style with environmentally sensitive fabrics, manufacturing and production processes, and ethical concerns.

 

Linda Loudermilk speaking about her vision for eco-fashion:

“We aim to give eco glamour legs, a fabulous look and a slammin’ attitude that stops traffic and shouts the message: eco can be edgy, loud, fun, playful, feminine (or not) and hyper-cool.”

Speaking on how people react to her eco haute couture collections:

“First it’s the clothes; then it’s ‘Why does this feel so good?’ And then they notice the hangtag. Our company motto is to smash old ideas of what you thought ‘eco’ was.”

Speaking on her move to sustainable and eco-friendly fashions:

“I have so much more serenity now, knowing I am trying to make a difference.”

Eco fashion and haute couture designer Linda Loudermilk on her upscale line which she has dubbed “Luxury Eco”. Linda Loudermilk uses fabrics made from bamboo jersey, soybeans, recycled soda bottles and wood pulp.

 

 

Richie Rich speaking about designing with sustainable, recyclable and environmentally friendly fabrics for the eco fashion event FutureFashion:

“It’s definitely something we’re going to continue toying with. People often perceive the fashion world as superficial, so it’s great to work with materials that are actually good for the environment. I had my doubts, but when we actually saw the fabric swatches we were blown away. They were gorgeous, and it wasn't hard to design with them.”

Heatherette designer Richie Rich. Richie Rich (a former Ice Capades skater) and Traver Rains (a former rodeo rider from Montana – “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys”) created Heatherette - a campy punk trash and flash fashion line that is currently hot with all the trash and flash chic celebs such as hip hopper Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim, Gwen Stefani, Shirley Manson, Paris Hilton, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, and Britney Spears.

For the eco fashion event FutureFashion, Richie Rich designed a pink and yellow Ingeo™ taffeta skirt made from corn fiber with a silver recycled polyester bustier. Lordy, Lordy, Lordy.

During Fashion Week 2005 in New York City, Earth Pledge teamed up with clothing retailer Barneys to sponsor FutureFashion, a special runway event intended to educate and demonstrate to the fashion world that there are sustainable fashion alternatives to the increasingly unsustainable and unhealthy chemical nanotechnology fabrics being used in conventionally produced fashions and apparel lines. For FutureFashion, 28 leading fashion designers were given the opportunity to create fashion using renewable, reusable, sustainable and eco-friendly fabrics such as organic cotton, organic wool, soy and corn fibers, eco-friendly biopolymers, and natural and low-impact dyes. They demonstrated that sustainable fashions can be as sublime … or as silly ... as fashion using unsustainable fabrics.

The multi-billion dollar fashion and garment industry is a major contributor, directly and indirectly, to global pollution. Earth Pledge has a tradition of identifying and promoting innovative thinking and technologies for restoring the balance between natural and manmade systems. Their FutureFashion show cornered major media interest and was a boon in helping to promote green, eco-fashion into the fickle, flighty fashion consciousness.

 

Remy Chevalier speaking of a Victoria’s Secrets fashion gala in NYC about the suppression of fashion models that had environmental concerns by designers and modeling agencies in the 1980’s and 1990’s:

  “It’s not easy being ‘green’ when you are dressed in feathers and treated like a toy.”

Remy Chevalier, Founder of Lü - a green fashion magazine and long time crusader for green projects and initiatives

 

Katharine Hamnet:

“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: "Look what I killed. Aren't I the best?"”

Katharine Hamnet, leading British eco-fashion designer and manufacturer for the Katharine E Hamnet line, with the “E” for environmental and ethical. Katharine Hamnet’s web site has published an excellent article “Clean Up or Die” summarizing the environment impact of the clothing, shoe and textile industry and what consumers can do to force environmental and ethical improvements.

 

Coco Chanel:

“Fashion is not something that exists only in dresses. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

Coco Chanel, a dominant force in shaping women’s fashions and even how women thought about themselves in a social context. Often taking everyday, common fabrics and styles usually associated with men such as suits and jersey cloth, Coco Chanel created feminine styles that were elegant and sophisticated yet in touch with the consciousness of the average working women.

 

Linda Ellerbee:

“If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?”

Linda Ellerbee, journalist, television producer, author, mother, grandmother and cancer survivor. Linda Ellerbee has an exceptional gift for being able to communicate directly to young children with respect, insight, and intelligence.

 

 

“I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

“Know first who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.”

Euripides, who lived from 480 – 406 BC and mostly wore a sheet.

 

Yves Saint-Laurent:

“I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity -- all I hope for in my clothes.”
 

“Fashions fade, but style is eternal.”

“It pains me physically to see a woman victimized, rendered pathetic, by fashion.”

Yves Saint-Laurent, considered by many in the fashion world to be the greatest fashion designer of the last century and the inventor of modern fashion. Yves Saint-Laurent is credited with changing the way women dressed by combining elegance and sophistication with a more wearable and practical style. He introduced styles such as pant suits and “smoking jackets” for ladies that tended to blur gender style stereotypes. In the early 1970’s, Yves Saint-Laurent posed nude for ads for YSL perfume and jeans to force the question of why it was more acceptable for women to pose nude in ads than men. Yves Saint-Laurent is also credited with creating a new business model for fashion.

 

“People ask how can a Jewish kid from the Bronx do preppy clothes? Does it have to do with class and money? It has to do with dreams.”
 

Ralph Lauren

 

“Fashion is more powerful than any tyrant.”

Latin Proverb

 

Priyanka Chopra:

“Fashion is not about being outlandish, it is about being you – yourself. Anything that you are comfortable in is fashion.”

Priyanka Chopra, winner of the Femina India – World 2000 title and the Miss World 2000 pagent. Hemant Trevedi designed many of her gowns.

 

 

Hemant Trevedi speaking upon fashion and the role of the designer:

“You don't need an idiotic designer telling you what to wear. We are just helping hands. We are there to guide you. Ultimately, you are the one buying the outfit, you are the one wearing it. Not me."

Speaking about cruelty-free and ethical fashions and his support for PeTA:
“I’m now using cruelty-free synthetic materials instead of leather. No one has the right to use a fashion show as a public platform to air one’s grievances or to justify the so-called ‘progress’ of the Indian leather industry, especially when there is a cause that is so much greater and needs to be brought to the notice of the public.”

Hemant Trevedi, leading Indian fashion designer.< /p>

“I admit to having worn suede and leather myself for a while, but you just never felt clean, and it’s degenerate anyway to use animal skins.”

“They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

Andy Warhol 1928 - 1987

 

Enjoy.

Michael
LotusOrganics.com
Purely Beautiful & Healthy Clothing

The Fog of CSR

In the later half of the 1990’s, a coalition of human rights groups, social activists, sweatshop watch organizations and labor groups took aim and declared war on the large clothing chains and sports wear companies that had outsourced manufacturing to developing countries. This coalition dragged the sweatshop conditions, low subsistence wages, and labor abuses found in many of these garment manufacturing companies into public awareness through boycotts, picketing, letter writing campaigns, and news stories published in big city newspapers, local shopping newsletters, and national television news. A photo of Pakistani children working in a factory sewing soccer balls for Nike cast Nike as the face of child labor abuser for the axis of corporate garment manufacturers.

And the campaigns being waged against the corporate garment manufacturers were being effective. A boycott call is perceived as negative news by the investment community (where perception is everything) and negative news depresses a stock’s share price. A fascinating study by Karen E. Schnietz, Ph.D. and Marc Epstein, Ph.D. indicated that stock prices and portfolio values of corporations with a poor reputation for corporate social responsibility were more adversely affected by a general economic crisis than companies with good reputations for corporate social responsibility.

The large clothing chain stores and sports wear manufacturers were caught in a pincer movement with the labor groups on one side pressing them to increase wages, improve working conditions and offer healthcare on one front, while the stock analysts and large brokerage houses of Wall Street Inc. were quietly pressuring them to reduce costs and improve revenues and profitability. What to do? The Nikes, Gaps, and Wal-Marts of the world needed a new weapon and the appreciation for Corporate Social Responsibility began to dawn.

Mallen Baker (mallenbaker.net) gives a very crisp, cogent definition of Corporate Social Responsibility as “how companies manage the business processes to produce an overall positive impact on society.” Many people also include environmental stewardship, including global warming concerns, as part of a company’s Corporate Social Responsibility.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) began to form as a business concept in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until Ben & Jerry’s  hired an independent ‘social auditor’ in 1988 to research and report on the social impact of Ben & Jerry’s on their employees, suppliers, and community. They were audited on their community outreach, philanthropic giving, environmental awareness, and the satisfaction of their employees, customers, suppliers and investors. Ben & Jerry’s undertook this CSR report because they truly cared about the social impact created by the company and not as a PR smokescreen. Ben & Jerry’s – home of wickedly rich and fanciful flavors – have always had ethics and community service as core business values.

When many of the large chain clothing and sports wear companies were engulfed in a blizzard of boycotts, pickets, and unfavorable news stories, they realized that their best defense is a strong, positive news campaign of their own and they adopted CSR policies stating their commitment to improve wage, safety and labor abuses in their factories and their requirement that suppliers adhere to these standards, also. Were they sincere in their desire to demonstrate that they had genuinely embraced new and improved ethical standards or was it just intended to deflect social criticism?  Probably a little bit of the former and a lot of the later.

Reports of abuses persisted, though, and increased public pressure from watchdog organizations forced many of these companies to improve on the independence and access of the monitoring organizations and the transparency of the supplier chains and business processes. Nike, for example, has terminated agreements with suppliers who use child labor and they have worked with the Global Alliance and the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to monitor business processes in supplier factories that actually manufacture the clothing and sports wear to insure the ethical and fair treatment of workers.

End of story, right? Another nasty social problem eliminated? Well … no. Watch dog organizations still report that millions of children globally work long days making shoes, rugs, and clothing for Western consumers. These indentured children can be found in homes and small factories throughout Asia and especially in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam and in Latin America. Millions of women and immigrant workers are trapped with barely sustainable wages working long hours without any benefits in desperate conditions to produce garments and clothing accessories that still appear in large chain stores such as Wal-Marts.

A huge and ethically significant workforce exists below the radar of many government, NGO and corporate monitoring and reporting organizations. These uncounted, undocumented, and sometimes illegal garment workers are often not even recognized as garment workers or employees because they work as “contractors” for manufacturing suppliers, in small illegal “sweatshop” garment factories, or in their homes doing piece work for larger garment manufacturing suppliers. The Clean Clothes Campaign and the International Restructuring Education Network Europe (IRENE) have documented the rise in “informal” and unaccounted workers in the global garment industry.  In the bright spotlight of public attention on the subsistence living of many garment workers, the problem areas often melt and reappear where public attention isn’t. Garment manufacturing suppliers often find ways to satisfy Corporate Social Responsibility requirements while affecting little real change in the lives of many of the workers.

What can the ethical shopper do to create real change? Continue the pressure on the large clothing chains to improve and strengthen independent CSR-compliance monitoring. Continue the public pressure for sustainable wages, healthcare, safe working conditions, and the right for workers to form labor organizations wherever garments are manufactured.

Ultimately, what is required is a change in the consciousness of clothing consumers. As long as we demand “Always Low Prices” and support large corporations which push prices lower by continually squeezing the garment suppliers, we will be supporting and encouraging corporations to squeeze their employees by offering barely sustainable wages without benefits and using “informal” contract workers. True social values and ethics must be at the core of a company’s identity and purpose. Otherwise, Corporate Social Responsibility polices are just fog and a diversion.

Shop Ethically.

Michael
LotusOrganics.com
Purely beautiful & healthy clothing

Ethical Clothing: Wrapped Around The Axle of Karma

In the first posting of our series “Ethical Clothing, Ethical Shopping", we examined ethics in the garment manufacturing industry and factors leading to the rise of domestic and global sweatshops. Our second posting explored ethics involved in clothes shopping and fair trade. In this third posting we will examine the edges and boundaries of thinking about what constitutes ethical clothing. For each of us, our ethics are personal, subjective and changing.

One way to review your thoughts is to examine the edges and boundaries surrounding ethical shopping and ethical clothing for what makes sense to you and what might challenge your views and feelings. Proponents of veganism have been challenging views about ethical clothing and ethical eating for millennium. The term ‘vegan’ (from VEGetariAN) was coined in November 1944 at the founding of The Vegan Society in London by six non-dairy vegetarians. The underlying concept of “promoting ways of living free of animal products for the benefit of people, animals and the environment” has been found in many sects throughout history and cultures. To avoid taking a life, some yogis in ancient India would eat only old, dried grasses and refused to eat vegetables and plants that had been sacrificed on the cook’s chopping block.

Closely aligned with animal rights, veganism is promoted as a cruelty-free lifestyle that does not exploit animals in any way. Vegans do not eat eggs, dairy products including milk, honey or a wide variety of products derived from animals and insects for health reasons and because they believe that using these products exploits other species. Vegan clothing does not use leather (because leather can only come from a dead animal), wool (because raising and shearing sheep is sometimes exploitive and cruel), down (because of the harsh way that down feathers are plucked from live geese), or silk (because silk comes from the cocoons of silkworms which are killed when the silkworm cocoon and the larva inside are dropped in boiling water to unravel the silkworm cocoon for silk fiber).

Scientific research suggesting that plants have awareness, consciousness, rudimentary emotions and feel pain has many vegans performing contorted grammatical parsing about the meaning of “cruelty-free”. There is no reason to believe that plants are life forms any less deserving of respect than other life forms which share this planet. Many vegan justifications for eating vegetables, even though plants obviously have awareness and are sensitive to their environment, begin to sound remarkably similar to meat-eaters justifications for munching on Ol' Bossy. 

Wool is avoided by many vegans because of a practice called mulesing on young lambs in Australia and because of animal rights concerns about the raising of animals being exploitive. Mulesing is the nasty practice of cutting away the folds of skin, without the use of anesthetics, around the anal area of sheep to prevent flies from laying eggs (which become maggots) in these folds of skin. The fly maggots would then infest and sicken the sheep. This is a problem and practice unique to Australia. About 25% of the world’s wool and almost 50% of the fine merino wool come from Australia. About 60% of the global wool supply is used in manufacturing clothing. Responding to pressure from a PeTA campaign (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), clothing retailers Abercombie & Fitch, Gap Inc, and Nordstrom began boycotting Australian merino wool in Fall 2004. The Australian wool industry agreed to phase out the practice of mulesing in Australia by 2010.

The manufacturing of wool garments and apparel from sheep, llamas and alpacas is central to the economies and livelihoods of many small farmers, weavers, artisans and textile workers throughout the world and especially among indigenous peoples in South America. Small farmers have a tradition of ethical animal husbandry. Their love and caring is rooted in a deep appreciation for the symbiotic relationship that they share with their flocks. To call the care of many small farmers toward their flock as being ‘exploitive’ is to be uninformed, unappreciative of the natural relationships that exist between species, and slightly arrogant to assume knowing what is in the heart of peoples unmet. Boycotting the wool products of many small farmers and indigenous peoples also needlessly robs them of the economic means to live a traditional lifestyle more in harmony with nature.

Vegan ethics are slinking onto the catwalks of major fashion houses such as the Paris couture house Chloe and companies in the Gucci Group. Long time vegetarian and international celebrity fashion designer Stella McCartney infuses vegan compassion into her pricey collections and refuses to design clothing or accessories using leather, furs or other animal products. An active crusader in the fight against the maltreatment of animals, Stella teamed up with PeTA to produce a video championing animal rights. While staying true to her principles of fashion with compassion, Stella McCartney cornered the VH1/Vogue Fashion and Music Designer of the Year award in 2000. While her clothes have been coveted for their youthful, flirty, funky, foxy, feminine, and floaty designs, Stella McCartney has been working with Adidas on a new line of women’s running shoe. Big label running shoes are typically about 50% styling, 50% engineering and 300% price. Stella’s design includes an asymmetrical lacing system and a “muted feminine color scheme including the signature Stella McCartney color of dusty rose.”  The McCartney Adidas a3 Flyride will be in stores in May and will sell for a swift $205 … which will have you panting for breath before you even leave the store.

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the major sport shoe companies – Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Fila, Puma, and ASICS – faced a barrage of public outrage over the sweatshop conditions in many of the factories in developing countries which manufacture sport shoes for these large corporations. Public pressure, bad press, and boycotts helped force these large corporations to acknowledge the labor abuses, such as wages below a subsistence living, 60+ hour work weeks, no overtime pay, unhealthy work conditions, poor and overcrowded living conditions, verbal and sexual abuse from supervisors, and a lack of any health benefits.

All of the major sport shoe companies and large corporations such as Starbucks and Wal-Mart that have fostered sweatshop conditions in developing countries have adopted policies and standards that fall under the wonderfully reassuring umbrella of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies to encourage their manufacturing suppliers to operate factories that are safe and fair workplaces. These corporate giants rely on external and internal auditors to monitor factory labor conditions. Nike, Adidas and Gang are also members of the Fair Labor Association which contracts with independent auditors. Sport shoes are manufactured at hundreds of factories in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries where there is a plentiful supply of cheap, and often desperate, workers. Monitors and external auditors have reported that conditions have improved in many factories but are still far below providing for a fair, safe and just life for their workers. The Nikes, Starbucks, Wal-Marts, and Adidas of the corporate jungle often use their Corporate Social Responsibility policies to deflect criticism and to smokescreen their minimal improvements for impoverished workers. We can only hope that Stella McCartney will extend her compassion for animal rights to influence her large sport wear collaborators to push for more just worker rights.

Stella McCartney is not the only haute couture designer to incorporate vegan principles in their fashion with animal compassion. Hemant Trevedi might not be found in the celebrity spotlights but he has become a fashion icon in his homeland of India and his deliciously rich gowns have swept down the high fashion runways of Munich, Milan, Paris, Delhi and London. Hemandt Trevedi’s creations have captured the rich, elaborate, and complex culture of Indian tradition in timelessly modern and elegant gowns. His creations have lent ease and sophistication to Miss India contestants in Miss World and Miss Universe contests for the last half dozen years. Hemandt Trevedi is also the creative consultant at the internationally recognized Sheetal Design Studio in Mumbai, India. To my simple eye, his gowns – especially his wedding gowns – transcend cultures and time giving an eternal elegance and grace to the wearer.

But perhaps the most provocative (and relevant to ethical clothing) is Hemandt Trevedi’s Veggie Collection which he designed for a PeTA campaign. Long flowing and masculine banana leaves for him, strategically placed broccoli that flatter the natural curves for her form the core of this animal-friendly, cruelty-free (unless you happen to be a broccoli) collection from Hemandt Trevedi. At your local Art Museum Charity Ball, you will provide the center of attention … and also the munchies if someone else brings the dip. While his new Veggie Collection might be more appropriate on the cow trail than the catwalk, it certainly does have a peel.

The motivation behind his quirky, but totally eco-friendly and sustainable, green collection for PeTA’s publicity campaign, was Hemandt Trevedi’s desire to avoid using any materials, accessories and fabrics, such as fur, leather, wools, that might have caused animals to suffer. Upon learning of the cruel and sometimes illegal trafficking of cows, buffaloes, goats, sheep and other animals for their skins, Trevedi renounced his position as director and choreographer of the fashion show at the prestigious annual International Leather Fair in Chennai, India. He also started boycotting the use of wool when he learned about the cruel practice of mulesing on sheep. Much of the wool in India is imported from Australia.

Even Pamela Anderson – former Playboy Playmate, Baywatch Babe, deep thinker, home movie buff and ethical purist – has joined the animal rights and ethical clothing parade with her new fashion line of cruelty-free clothing. Pamela Anderson’s fashion collection consists of non-leather shoes and Ugg-style boots, sexy all-natural fiber lingerie, and clothing made without hurting animals. Anderson is also designing what she calls “sexy, California-style” sweaters and jeans that fit snug to the knee and “made to fit a woman’s body.” Hmmm ... is that a natural or enhanced body?  “It’s basically clothes that I want to wear,” Pamela confessed. The lettuce-entertain-you bikini was her design for another PeTA ad campaign.

While different in their focus, ethical clothing, organic clothing and sustainable clothing are united in their fundamental respect for the earth and all creatures. The ethical shopper will seek out natural, organic clothing that was grown or raised lightly and sustainably upon the earth without poisonous and toxic pesticides or herbicides, by farm and garment workers who received a fair and livable wage under safe and healthy working conditions, using ecologically-friendly manufacturing processes. And the easiest way to shop ethically? At your locally-owned shops or use your mouse … this is one ‘animal’ that you can exploit without guilt.

Enjoy.

Michael
LotusOrganics.com
Purely Beautiful & Healthy Clothing