Organic Eucalyptus - An Alternative Material To Cotton?

Author
Rozie Apps

Eucalyptus is a fast-growing tree with the potential to be an ethical and eco-friendly material for the fashion industry, but only if it is planted in the right place.

Working towards a sustainable, ethical and ecological lifestyle is important to the health of our planet and ourselves.

We question where our food comes from, how has it been grown, or where our electricity and energy comes from. Are they renewable? Ethical? Sustainable?

But what about our clothing?

The clothing industry hasn't reached the same level of sustainability as food and energy. Cheap clothes are everywhere and are too easy to avoid.

But there are alternatives.

Here we explore how eucalyptus can be turned into a sustainable fabric for good quality and ethical clothing. 

Eucalyptus

Eucalyptus is a woody flowering tree or shrub. There are around 700 different species, mostly found in Australia and southeast Asia but several varieties grow in Europe, America and Africa. It is a fast growing plant that has attracted attention for producing an oil that can be used for cleaning and as a natural insecticide. When it is harvested, it is cut rather than uprooted, and so grows back, and with speed, making it a renewable material. An essential oil extracted from eucalyptus leaves contains compounds that are powerful natural disinfectants, which makes it a popular fragrance for soap makers. 

Unlike organic cotton plants, eucalyptus is woody and therefore needs energy input to convert it into a soft fibre before it can be used for clothing.

Eucalyptus as a material

Eucalyptus as a material is known as Tencel Lyocell. It is made from the pulp of eucalyptus trees.

Eucalyptus Tencel is produced using a lyocell process exclusively from the wood pulp of eucalyptus trees certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC), and the fibre carries the Pan-European Forest Council (PEFC) quality seal.

The eucalyptus goes through a similar process as other semi-synthetic natural fibres, such as Viscous bamboo fabric, but the Lyocell process used to make eucalyptus is more benign and eco-friendly.

To make Tencel Lyocell Eucalyptus garments, the eucalyptus wood is pulped, reduced down into a cellulose viscous solution that is forced through spinnerets. These stringy fibres that come out of the nozzle are spun into a soft, lightweight and breathable fabric called Tencel.

The only chemical used in the Tencel manufacturing process is the non-toxic solvent, amine oxide, that allows closed loop processing where up to 99% of the chemical is perpetually re-used, minimising the impact on the environment and conserving energy and water.

The MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for lyocell rates the amine oxide solvent used to digest the wood pulp as being non-toxic. About 99% is recovered and recycled during the manufacturing process. Also, waste products in the air and water from the manufacturing process are minimal and considered harmless.

Lyocell fiber is eco-friendly since products made from it can be recycled and Lyocell is biodegradable because it is a cellulosic fiber. Products made from Lyocell can be recycled or digested in sewage. The fibre will usually degrade completely in just eight days in waste treatment plants.

The European Union (EU) awarded this process the Environmental Award 2000 in the category 'technology for sustainable development'.

The downfall 

Although the process of creating eucalyptus material can be considered semi-sustainable, and the plant itself can be coppiced to grow again, the planting and growing of it is considered environmentally destructive.

Huge expanses of native forests have been destroyed to make way for eucalyptus plantations. One area hugely affected is the Iberian Peninsula across Spain and Portugal. Portugal has the second largest eucalyptus plantation (300,000 hectares), which has meant severe degradation of the environment, draining marshland and destroying vital woodland. 

The Iberian Peninsula is home to diverse ecosystems of trees, plants and wildlife. These include the critically endangered Iberian lynx, Spanish imperial eagle and great buzzard. Also found here are native cork oaks (Quercus suber) and holm oaks (Quercus ilex), most of which have been felled.

If eucalyptus can be grown without clearing great swathes of native ecosystems, it could have a great chance in leading sustainable fashion.

Permaculture clothing

Permaculture magazine have teamed up with Rapanui, an ethical UK based clothing company, to launch its very own permaculture clothing range (alongside other select items). Rapanui produce beautiful t-shirts and sweaters that a comfortable as well as artistic, using organic cotton, bamboo and eucalyptus. Rapanui also use safe dyes, sustainable materials and source their products from factories that follow the Fair Wear principles. Their UK factory is also wind powered. We feel strongly about sustainable fashion and know our readers do too… It's great to have companies like Rapanui out there already designing and making the changes needed available. See https://permaculture.teemill.co.uk

Rozie Apps is assistant editor of Permaculture magazine.

For further information log on website :
https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/organic-eucalyptus-alternative-material-cotton

Growing Pumpkins & Squashes Vertically

Author
Maddy Harland

Maddy experiments with using the vertical as well as the horizontal to grow small pumpkins and squash up, stacking more plants in garden beds.

Some years ago I visited Rebecca Hosking and Tim Green on the farm and saw their raised bed veggie garden. Tim had woven hazel domes over the beds to grow squashes upwards rather than have them trailing on the ground.

There are definite advantages to this idea. Firstly, the young squashes have a better chance of getting away as they climb a structure away from slugs and snails. You can also stack more plants if you use vertical as well as horizontal space. Useful in a smaller garden. When the plants crop, the squashes are suspended above the ground and less vulnerable to slugs.

Last year one of my squashes climbed up a sweetcorn in perfect Native American style. So this year I wanted to work with this idea. I thought of weaving hazel domes like Tim's but I went for a simpler, quicker design. The Sustainability Centre had fenced a pond with stock wire (to stop our young visitors from falling in) and had some of a roll left over. Not really enough to be useful for fencing. I asked 'The Management' if I might have it and was kindly given permission to take it away.

My squash and mini pumpkin patch was to be on an area I had mulched with cardboard and black plastic. First of all I removed the plastic and checked how the bindweed was doing. I also inadvertently disturbed some very valuable visitors.

 


With wire cutters in hand I unrolled the wire roll and cut a strip 17 squares long to fit the space.



Bluey the Dog was a great help holding down the wire.



I then rolled the wire into a circle and secured it by banging a hazel stake into the ground and secured it with plastic ties. I also used garden wire on one circle. Then I used the excess wire on one end of the fencing and wrapped it around the other end to hold it together.



Here's the 4 circles in a row. Sorry about the lack of light - it was raining.



I have planted two plants on each circle, a greater density than I would plant if I was only growing squash on the horizontal but I think it will work. The varieties are mini pumpkins (I am not sure bigger varieties of pumpkin would be supported), and butternut, spaghetti and sucrine du berry squashes.

Mirabelle the Dog became very fascinated with the whole project and spent hours gazing with admiration at my work. In fact they both did.



I think they were after a sight of the toads...

I will mulch this area with straw once the pumpkins have got away or if we get a sunny spell. I won't risk creating a slug habitat before then. If I can get some woodchip though I will mulch now. To protect the young plants Tim placed some crushed charcoal around them and added crushed egg shells on top. Slugs don't like traversing either of these.

I will post a photograph later in the year and let you know how successful this project is. If you grow squash on structures please let me know how you get on too.

Further resources

Make the most of your unused space amd grow vertically
How to make vertical raised beds for urban green spaces
5 ways to grow edibles vertically

Edible Cities: Urban Permaculture for Gardens, Yards, Balconies, Rooftops and Beyond for a special price of £11.21 from our Green Shopping site (also available as a pdf)

Permaculture in Pots: How to Grow Food in Small Urban Spaces for a special price of £9.70 from our Green Shopping site (also available as an eBook)

Edible Perennial Gardening: Growing Successful Polycultures in Small Spaces for a special price of £11.21 from our Green Shopping site
Maddy Harland is the co-founder and editor of Permaculture - practical solutions for self reliance established in 1992. You can read a free copy online by clicking HERE. You can subscribe to our digital issue for just £2.75 ($2.99) a quarter. A digital subscription also enables you to read and search our back issues but if you like the lovely paper edition please see SUBSCRIBE.

For further information log on website :
https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/growing-pumpkins-squashes-vertically

Fashion answers call from the woods

​The world is using more and more textiles, and there is a growing demand for sustainable materials, such as fibers from wood.

PUBLISHED: 12/4/2015 10:00 AM

​Construction, furniture and paper – wood is truly a versatile raw material. It is also taking big strides in an unexpected direction.

Environmentally-friendly and inexpensive, viscose and other textiles made from wood fibres are becoming more popular as an alternative to cotton. "It is extremely promising," says Sirpa Valimaa, who is part of Stora Enso’s Biomaterials team.

Viscose, also known as artificial silk, was patented in the late 1800’s. While it has been around for some time, it is not until recently that is has become a contender to cotton and polyester – the world’s favorite raw materials for garments. It isn’t without merit.

For one thing, viscose transports humidity much better than cotton. As any jogger will testify, a sweaty T-shirt will stay wet on your back all day. A shirt made from viscose will feel dry within minutes. Production-wise, viscose also has an advantage. While it takes almost 12 000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of cotton, you can make 26 kg of viscose with the same amount of water.

 
"The world is using more and more textiles, and there is a growing demand for sustainable materials, such as fibers from wood,” says Ms. Weronika Rehnby who works with sustainability issues at TEKO – Swedish Textile and Clothing Industries Association. "We are looking for renewable and reusable material, and in that respect viscose produced in a sustainable way is a very good alternative”.

So where does fashion enter the picture? Is it really possible to make something fashionable from a tree? Not only is it possible, it is already being done. "Viscose, lyocell and tencel are all made from fibres. While fast-growing bamboo and eucalyptus have traditionally been used, spruce and birch are also viable alternatives. The challenge for the industry is to come up with sustainable processes," says Sigrid Barnekow at Mistra Future Fashion, a research programme working to develop ecologically adapted textiles and create a new and more sustainable way of fashion.

As societies worry about what is known as “peak cotton,” viscose and other alternatives are gaining popularity among garment makers. "We are very optimistic about this new trend", adds Sirpa at Stora Enso. She emphasises however that Stora Enso does not limit itself to finding an alternative to cotton. "There are many other uses for textile pulp," she says and points to ongoing trials with making cellophane, sponges and even casing for sausage.

Others are equally positive in their outlook. Sigrid Barnekow of Mistra Future Fashion thinks that textile pulp can be a new important focus for the forest industry. "Currently, viscose accounts for 4% of the total market in Europe. We believe the demand will grow even further," she says.

For further information log on website :
http://www.storaenso.com/newsandmedia/fashion-answers-call-from-the-woods

TENCEL

TENCEL® branded lyocell fibers from the house of Lenzing. They are of botanic origin, since they are extracted from the raw material wood. Fiber production itself is extremely ecofriendly, due to the closed loop system. On the day that the TENCEL® fibers were invented, a new chapter was written in the history of fibers. Textiles of TENCEL® fibers are more absorbent than cotton, softer than silk and cooler than linen.



Botanic Fibers

From wood to fiber

TENCEL® fibers come from nature and make use of photosynthesis which has, since the beginning of time, been an important mechanism in nature and the basis for life on earth. In photosynthesis the energy from the sun is absorbed by various dyestuffs, primarily green chlorophyll, and converted into chemical energy. In this respect, the starting products of carbon dioxide and water are converted into dextrose and oxygen. The more TENCEL® fibers you have, the more oxygen.

Ecological production

Closed loop process

The unique closed loop process makes TENCEL® fibers the fibers of the future since the solvent used is recycled by almost 100% in the closed loop process. This special process received the "European Award for the Environment" from the European Union.

For further information log on website :
http://www.lenzing-fibers.com/en/tencel/

Sustainable Fashion Design Begins With Sustainable Materials

Using sustainable materials to make the fabrics which are then shaped to create clothes is the perhaps the most basic way to achieve sustainable fashion design.

This article, part of our series on Sustainable Fashion, explores 5 innovative materials that are sustainable alternatives for designers. They've appeared in the last couple of decades, but aren't yet widely known to consumers.  Most are in use today, and all create new options for designers with an eye on sustainability.

Modern Sustainable Materials & Fabrics

Most of today's apparel doesn’t break down easily when discarded, ending up in polluting landfills for decades or even centuries. So some basic changes in the fashion industry's attitude to sustainable materials would have a major long term benefit to the planet.

If more fabric itself is sustainable, several of today's fashion industry challenges around pollution and sustainability would be immediately addressed.

Many designers acknowledge this in their work, using fabrics based on natural materials we've known about and used for centuries. Cotton, linen, hemp and silk are just some with an ancient history.  Although even these can cause problems, with modern agriculture causing troubling effects on the environment.

But if sustainable textile materials are defined as those that don't exhaust non-renewable resources, we have other options thanks to modern technology and research.  Teams today and in recent years have been developing materials that don't use polluting chemicals and toxins while being manufactured.

The results are innovative sustainable materials and fabrics that are viable alternatives to fashion industry norms. Some are from plant sources, others have origins you certainly wouldn’t associate with fabrics.

Here are 5 new sustainable materials you ought to know about if you have an interest in sustainable fashion, especially consumers who want to know more what goes into their clothes​.

---

Next Jumpsuit - 100% Tencel

1. Tencel
(Eucalyptus trees)

Austrian company, Lenzing is very active in man-made fibres. They first created Modal which today is mainstream and used in a variety of apparel.

TencelR is another sustainable eco-friendly material in their stable. Originally created as Lyocell in the 80’s it's now branded Tencel.  It's regenerated from wood cellulose from farm grown eucalyptus trees. 99.5% of solvents used in its fibre creation are reused, creating a near closed loop system.

TencelR fibres are soft, absorbent, very strong when wet or dry, wrinkle-resistant and biodegradable. TencelR is used for a variety of apparel from underwear to denim today.

Read more about Tencel at this link.

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2. Seacell 
(Wood cellulose & seaweed)

What happens when you take wood cellulose fibre and add sea weed to it? You get a sustainable material called Seacell, created by SmartFiber AG, a German fibre manufacturer of lyocell fibres.

Cashmere fashion with Seacell

Just over a decade old, SmartFiber AG use the same nearly close loop system of lyocell but then add Icelandic seacell into it as a substrate to improve its use as a fashion textile. This gives consumers the benefits of seaweed which the makers say include Vitamin E and antioxidant properties.

Read more about Seacell at this link.

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3. Chitosan or Chitin Fibre
(Crustacean shells)

SwicoFil, another German natural and synthetic fibre manufacturer, have created something called Chitosan or Chitin Fibre.  It's one of their many sustainable materials, but probably the most memorable!

Creative sustainable fashion design!

Chitin is related chemically to cellulose, but is a semitransparent substance that makes up the hard outer covering of crustacean shells like crabs and lobsters.  It's mixed with viscose to create fabrics which are antibacterial, bio-degradable, hypoallergenic and with high moisture absorption.

Read more about Chitosan at this link.

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4. Corkshell
(Wine corks)

Made with a by-product from wine cork production, this is an FSC certified cork powder.

Sustainable material from by-product of wine cork manufacture

This natural granulate is crushed and merged with the fabric in a patented process from Schoeller. The result is a material that has a 50% higher thermal insulation which is breathable, soft and lightweight.  This creates options for not only more sustainable fashion design, but more functional too.

Read more about Corkshell at this link.

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5. QMilch
(Milk protein)

You might think this is fiction or an April Fool, but QMilch is a fabric made from milk protein, casein. Not just milk protein, but milk that can no longer be sold.

Milk - an unlikely source of sustainable material for fabric

Not only is the fabric made from an unlikely material, but it also has a surprising number of positive characteristics for sustainable fashion design. It’s biodegradable, antibacterial, anti-allergenic and soft and comfortable to wear. It can be used by itself or blended with other materials like silk or cotton.

Set up by a biochemist turned fashion designer, just five years ago, this sustainable material holds a lot of promise, but is still not available from suppliers. Hopefully that will change in this coming year.

The next time you are out shopping for clothes, take a closer look at the details of the materials and technologies that are used to make them.  If you start looking at the fabrics for signs of sustainable fashion design, you might be pleasantly surprised by what you discover.


For further information log on website :
https://www.zayahworld.com/sustainable-fashion-design-needs-sustainable-materials/

5 materials you probably wouldn't expect in fashion

Rubber, paper, wood: Fashion doesn't need to stick to the usual suspects. Here are five unexpected materials that are used to make clothes and accessories.

• Date 15.04.2016
• Number of pictures 5
• Author Antje Binder / eg
• Related Subjects Wolfgang Joop
• Keywords Lifestyle, High five,fashion
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• Permalink http://p.dw.com/p/1IU0e

Paper dresses

The shapes of these dresses are created through intricate folds. The designer Jule Waibel needs over 10 hours and three meters (10 feet) of paper for a short dress. Although it might not survive a rainstorm, the design definitely attracts the eye. Waibel has also started using her folded designs on materials suited to everyday wear.

For further information log on website :
http://www.dw.com/en/5-materials-you-probably-wouldnt-expect-in-fashion/g-19181600

5 materials you probably wouldn't expect in fashion

Rubber, paper, wood: Fashion doesn't need to stick to the usual suspects. Here are five unexpected materials that are used to make clothes and accessories.

Rubber bags

Instead of letting the inner tubes of bicycles, motorbikes or trucks evaporate into smoke at an incineration plant, the Berlin designer and passionate motorcyclist Katja Werner upcycles this resistant and durable material into bags and cases for glasses or cell phones. The curves of the rubber tubes predetermine the shapes of her models

For further information log on website :
http://www.dw.com/en/5-materials-you-probably-wouldnt-expect-in-fashion/g-19181600

The Clothing Insurrection: It’s Time to Take On the Fashion Supply Chain

Author
by MAYA SINGER

As one of the biggest players in the global economy, the fashion industry has a responsibility to help protect the environment. We’re commemorating this Earth Week by asking some tough questions about our impact on the planet and what we can do about it. We’ll also be profiling people and companies who are instigating change. We’re calling the series “,” and to kick things off, Maya Singer takes a look at the harsh realities of the fashion supply chain.

I used to have nightmares about plastic. Back in 2008, I spent New Year’s Day immersed in The World Without Us, **Alan Weisman’**s thought experiment about what would happen to Earth if the human race was suddenly raptured off the face of it. There’s a ton of fascinating data in that book—including some frightening facts about cats—but the chapter that really stuck with me was the one in which Weisman describes the giant garbage patches forming in ocean eddies. I’d heard about those, of course, but what I hadn’t understood was that the plastic products therein have a rate of decomposition that must be measured in geologic time. One scientist Weisman spoke to suggested 100,000 years as a good guess of how long it would take for most of the plastic trash on the planet to biodegrade. In the meantime, the plastic that finds its way to water is breaking down into tiny particles, which creatures such as plankton confuse with food. Plankton is the building block of the entire food chain. Today, in many areas of the world, plastic particles far outnumber the plankton found near the surface of the seas.

The World Without Us is one of the seminal texts of my life_._ It changed the way I looked at the world, made me see it in much the way I imagine the photographer Andreas Gursky does, as a vast machine of people and goods. I spent a lot of time, in 2008, worrying about nurdles—the 2 millimeter beads melted down to make plastic of all kinds—and preaching to people about compost. And because that was also the year I began my tenure at Style.com, I found myself taking a keen interest in the fashion supply chain.

“Supply chain.” The phrase is so vague, so neutral, it would seem to have been coined with the intent to make people’s eyes glaze over when they come upon it. What it refers to is the back end of any business that sells goods—the “chain” linking the source of component parts, the factories where those parts are made into buyable stuff, and the distribution network by which that stuff is delivered to consumers (or the stores they frequent). Back in ye olde days, the fashion supply chain was straightforward: A farmer shears his sheep for wool; a village weaver makes it into fabric; the tailor buys the fabric and sews a cassock for a local burgher, or whatever. I’m approximating, but you get the point. Then, you know, feudalism ended, the Industrial Revolution happened, Henry Ford invented the assembly line, globalization became a thing. Now, in the era of hypercapitalism, the typical fashion supply chain is vast and Rube Goldberg-esque. To wit:

“According to fashion theory, there are 101 stages in the supply chain, the first being ‘designer attends fabric show’ and the last, ‘order ready for shipment,’” writes Lucy Siegle in her book To Die For, a useful primer on the subject. The theory Siegle refers to, the one taught in schools, is actually very abbreviated: It leaves out the steps required to create the fabrics designers pore over at shows such as Première Vision, not to mention the hydra-headed distribution network that delivers apparel to stores. Farmers farm, weavers weave, dye-ers dye, cutters cut, sewers sew; goods are packaged and placed onto pallets and heaved onto cargo ships or jammed into air freight; they arrive at warehouses worldwide and go back out again, to shops or to shoppers buying online. Millions of people and metric tons of water, chemicals, crops, and oil are involved in the process that turns a designer’s fancy into a sensuous object hanging on a rail in a store. That’s the supply chain, and its labyrinthine totality is designed to make the satisfaction of consumer desire as frictionless as possible. I want that! Click. A couple days later, a package arrives on your doorstep.

In the era of hypercapitalism, the typical fashion supply chain is vast and Rube Goldberg-esque.

See what I mean about a machine? The modern industrial supply chain is fascinating, if—like me—it’s in your nature to be fascinated by that kind of thing. Everyone else seems to find the topic painfully dull. As Tom McCarthy wrote of the mysterious “Project” at the center of his recent novel Satin Island, the fashion supply chain “will have had direct effects on you…although you probably don’t know this. Not that it was secret. Things like this don’t need to be. They creep under the radar by being boring. And complex.”

So I’m going to try to make this interesting. Imagine Jennifer Lawrence. Better yet, imagine you are Jennifer Lawrence, star of an action franchise set in a future dystopia. In this world, the social norm is that you must purchase, on a regular basis, a particular garment—many serviceable versions of which you already own. The livelihoods of many people are staked on your buying and re-buying this garment. Then, one day, you—action heroine you—make a discovery. The factory where your society’s ubiquitous garment is made is spewing so much noxious matter into the atmosphere that the world could end if it doesn’t stop. The Hollywood version of this story would feature a villain—some masterminding despot at the system’s tippy-top, who could be found out and deposed. A kinder, gentler economic system would magically emerge, and you’d begin your reign as the beneficent queen of the land, some pretty-boy love interest by your side. The end.

Now imagine that the ubiquitous garment at the center of this Hollywood pic is: Jeans. That’s more or less the world we’re living in, we super-shoppers of the developed West. We are end users of a product—seemingly innocuous, but not—that we buy and re-buy without much thought. Because, you know, that’s just how it is. That’s what we do.

The impacts of the fashion supply chain are vast. For the purposes of space, I’m going to set aside discussion of humans and animals and focus solely on the environmental costs. Which is absurd—surely humans and animals count as part of “the environment?”—but unavoidable. A person’s mind can only boggle at so much at once. So, to return to the scenario above, consider denim. It is made from cotton picked from farms all over the world. The cotton is shipped back and forth across the oceans to be made into fabric, sewn, and dyed. Along the way, the average pair of jeans is treated with PFCs, chemicals that make material breathable and stain-resistant, and washed with detergents that contain alkylphenol ethoxylates, another hazardous compound. The whole process is incredibly water-intensive, from the farm up, and the carbon load from the shipping of the cotton to mills and the raw denim to factories is astronomical on its own. Then there’s the additional impact of the transport, by boat or train or jet, of jeans to stores. They arrive sealed in clear plastic bags, which are promptly trashed. At least cotton decomposes; those bags make their way to landfills, or perhaps, seized with a sense of adventure, out to the big Pacific garbage patch between California and Hawaii. How many pairs of jeans do you own? I think I’ve got about a dozen pairs, of which I wear maybe four.

A single pair of jeans is no threat to Planet Earth. But as Siegle notes in her book, “a staggering one-and-a-half-billion pairs of jeans and cotton trousers are sewn in Bangladesh every year.” And that’s just in Bangladesh. And that’s just jeans (and cotton trousers). Virtually every mass-produced fashion item arrives at our shores with a likewise Byzantine backstory. And in most cases, it’s the sheer scale of the enterprise that’s doing the damage. Our insatiable desire for cheap cashmere results in the overbreeding of goats in the Gobi, a delicate ecosystem quickly being denuded of the vegetation required to support animals like, well, goats. Over in India, the chromium used by low-cost leather tanneries has stained portions of the Ganges bright blue and rendered them pretty much devoid of life. Or, to shift the action to Indonesia and Brazil, spare a thought for that workhorse material, viscose. Viscose is produced from wood pulp, and thanks to the material’s omnipresence in fashion, it’s implicated in the destruction of huge parcels of rain forest. Friendly reminder: The rain forest is our most effective carbon sink, soaking up CO2 and breathing it back out in the form of delicious oxygen.

The problem with fashion, vis-à-vis the environment, isn’t with any one product or any one process.

This month, the Rainforest Action Network launched a new campaign, Out of Fashion, calling on 15 well-known brands to commit to making changes in their supply chain that would ameliorate forest loss. There are other initiatives in the works, as well: April 24 marks the first-ever Fashion Revolution Day, in which people worldwide are asked to post selfies with the content labels of their clothes as a way of challenging the fashion industry to become more transparent.

Meanwhile, a number of brands have started to take steps in the right direction. Levi’s has been spearheading the drive to make denim production more water-efficient, and the company has committed to phasing out its use of PFCs by July 2016. Elsewhere on the denim front, Pharrell Williams has partnered with G-Star to create a range made from yarn spun out of cotton and shredded plastic sieved from ocean trash. (I guess Pharrell has the same nightmares I do.) Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault has emerged as a thought leader on sustainability: He’s instituted sourcing and waste-reduction reforms company-wide, and established the Material Innovation Lab, which develops sustainable—or at least more sustainable—luxury-grade textiles. Among fast-fashion brands, H&M has demonstrated a sincere desire to clean up its act, launching a variety of initiatives under its H&M Conscious banner (which you can read about on its website) and pledging to use nothing but organic or recycled cotton in its clothes by 2020. H&M is already the biggest user of organic cotton in the world.

These efforts are all commendable. But there’s the larger issue, which is indeed one of size. The problem with fashion, vis-à-vis the environment, isn’t with any one product or any one process. Some of these are pretty effing bad, but it’s the scale of production that really matters in the end. An immense infrastructure has been devised to support a shopping culture in which we’re encouraged to buy more, more, more. Buy now; buy cheaper; buy constantly.

I’ll spare you the lecture about conscious consumerism. No doubt you’ve heard it before. Instead, allow me to pause to admit that I, myself, am entirely pervious to shopping’s allure. Just this week, I conceived an urgent desire for cropped flares, two embroidered cotton blouses from Madewell, and a shiny new pair of Birks. The flares I found vintage, the blouses I decided to sleep on until I could decide between the two, and the Birkenstocks I skipped because, you know, the pair I own will do. All of which I mention only to note that it felt like an act of real discipline to limit my purchasing. The whole process left me more exhausted than satisfied. I don’t think I’m alone in having that hollow feeling, contemplating my haul. And then—out of habit, really—returning to stores to look for some other thing that might fill the void.

Which is to say: I’m part of this machine. So are you. My Hunger Gamesreference above wasn’t idle; I have a theory that the current taste for dystopian fiction derives from the sense that we’ve all been conscripted into a system we don’t particularly understand and have no meaningful power to take on. I mean, where would you start? There’s no grinning villain here, just a tangled network of trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership now under negotiation, far-flung farms and factories, and corporations pressed to deliver greater profits, year over year, to shareholders. The fashion supply chain is lubricated by cheap oil and cheap credit, and driven by the capitalist imperative to grow. Even designers who’d rather not are compelled to compromise on fabric and shift production abroad in order to deliver collections more cheaply and more quickly to more and more stores. And thus the machine hums on. I imagine the music it makes sounds something like Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money.”

Having a sense of style is a way of taking action. People should take fashion more seriously, not less.

Do I sound angry? I am. We consumers have been shielded from the consequences of our habits. I’m angry that the moral imperative is then heaved back onto us: We’re implored to shop responsibly, even as governments and corporations further a geopolitical setup that goads us into buying more and more stuff. I didn’t invent the Export Processing Zone. Did you?

I’m not advocating passivity. As a lover of fashion, I’d like to promote the idea that having a sense of style is a way of taking action: If you’re finicky in your taste, fussy about the way your clothes are made, and curatorial in your approach to putting together a wardrobe, that’s a pretty good defense against the temptation to buy some piece of tat, you know, just because. People should take fashion moreseriously, not less.

But as worthy and as necessary as it may be to assert some rigor at the till, and consider the origins of our clothes, the actions we have to take to clean up this mess aren’t just personal. They’re political, too. Or, to put that another way: You don’t just vote with your pocketbook; you also vote with your vote. And you vote with your voice, as more than 100,000 people did when they came out for the People’s Climate March in New York City in September. We need to mobilize for change. It’s not impossible. If oil were more expensive, things would change. If companies were legally enjoined to bear the true costs of their environmental impacts—cleaning up the rivers, replanting the forests, paying for medical care in communities whose land and water have been devastated, and so on—things would change. If people demanded that trade pacts like TPP were negotiated publicly and made to include enforceable high standards regarding workers’ rights, animal welfare, and sustainability, things would change. But a mass movement is required to challenge the status quo and establish a more just system in its place. The only other option is revolution, which is just politics by other means. To paraphrase William Blake: You must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s. What would Katniss Everdeen do?

For further information log on website :
http://www.vogue.com/article/fashion-supply-chain-environmental-impact

Poverty and commercialization of non-timber forest products

Author

Alejandro Lopez-Feldman (lopezfeldman@gmail.com)

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: While there is much interest by NGOs and environmental groups in the potential of non-timber forest products (NTFP) programs to si- multaneously achieve conservation and poverty alleviation, there is not a great deal of understanding of whether they work in practice, and how incentives and local management do, indeed affect poverty and local resource use. In this paper I propose a methodology to analyze the potential impacts that price increases can have on the income that extractors receive from NTFP extraction. The case study illustrates how one could evaluate the effectiveness of different price scenarios. It also shows the kind of biologic and socioeconomic information that is needed to apply the methodology suggested. The more accurate the information is the more confident one can be about the policy recommendations. This is an area of opportunity where applied research between economists and ecologists can lead to con- crete policy applications.

Keywords: Non-timber forest products; poverty; resource extraction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I30 Q20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
Date: 2011-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:29696

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