NEWS: Eco-Friendly Clothing -- Not Quite There Yet.

CULTURE: Eco-Friendly Clothing -- Not Quite There Yet.

Your clothing choices can impact the environment as much as your carbon emissions but is it possible to shop and dress in a completely green fashion? Clothing that's labeled "eco-friendly" can be just as misleading as packaged food labeled "organic." Most designers and clothing companies are not making it easy to cut through the crap. If you want to shop green, it's really about deciding what area you're most comfortable comprising.

For example Barney's now offers a "Have a Green Holiday Catalog," complete with pillows embroidered with statements like, "Green is Groovy" or "Save the Planet." The catalog promises "fabulously fair-trade fashion," "sensationally sustainable swag" and "orgasmic organic denim and cashmere." (I'm a little disappointed that they couldn’t pull off alliteration on that last one.) Nowhere on the catalog does it offer proof or information on how exactly their clothing is fair-trade or organic. It's not that I'm a complete skeptic but I'm sure there are loopholes. The New York Times reports that:

The Times also points out that the Barney's catalog carries a ridiculous (my word, not theirs) canvas handbag worth $1,065 (add $310 for a gold, monogrammed recycling symbol.)

There will always be people with money to blow who will find a way to incorporate recycling, Darfur and orphans into fashion trends but for the rest of us who actually might want to be more conscientious about clothing - how do we discern?

People have been wearing hemp even before it was cool. (Will it ever be cool?) But consider what happens to materials like hemp or bamboo before they're turned into a ruffled dress.

Soy, you say?

What about a pretty dress made from organic cotton? That's grown without pesticides!

Another stumbling block to being completely eco-friendly is that even clothes made from recycled plastics are usually gathered in the U.S., shipped to Japan to process, made in China and then sent back to the U.S. for distribution.

Oh! Foiled again! What's a tree-hugger to do?

You can head to Good Will or look for clothing lines that make trendy outfits out of leftover scraps or vintage clothes. And the ultimate sustainable act is repurposing what you already own. If you don't have a backyard, get a wooden clothing rack and let your stuff air dry to save energy. (There's nothing like a crisp, stiff, air-dried pair of jeans on a cold winter morning!)

The dry cleaning industry has made huge strides in eco-friendly practice. You don’t have to smell like a chemical plant when you wear your power suits anymore. Dry cleaners do not have to use "perc."

Lots of dry cleaners have switched to "Green Earth" dry cleaning.

Just in case you were heading out the door with your fine linens to find your neighborhood eco-friendly dry cleaner, hang on. NPR reported:

To confuse you even more The Silicones Environmental Health and Safety Council issued a statement arguing that D5 is safe for "its intended uses, including dry cleaning."

Now, if you want to be a do-gooder but don’t have environmentally friendly stores in your area and you're forced to live like a mall rat amongst The Gap, Old Navy and the like -- you can always shop for labels that donate some of their proceeds to charity. Unfortunately, you'll just have to take their word for it.

The New York Times reports that American Eagle claims to give $10 of the $19.95 cost of their "Better World" scarf.

But non-profit experts are skeptical.

Is anyone really surprised? My eyes tend to glaze over whenever I see store promotions involving proceeds going to charity. I'm sure it's not an out-and-out lie but as I said at the beginning of this, I'm sure that there are loopholes.

There is no easy or convenient way to research what that 'organic' label means that you see on the racks. I think the first baby-step is the realization that clothing manufacturing is a huge part of the green movement but we're not as educated about the effects in the same way that we're experts on the carbon emissions of cars, planes, Aqua Net hairspray. No one is going to save the world with their choice of outfits right now but at least we can start to learn how to truly understand labels so that we're not just hemp-wearing sheep.

We all already have a 100% natural outfit, but it's a bit cold to go walking around naked outside.

I work at a store where we are currenltly selling reusable shopping bags, or you get one for free if you spend over 50$.

I haven't even looked into where/how the bags are made or of what, but it is all hypocritcal to me based on the fact that every bag (and damn near every other item we sell) is individually wrapped in plastic. It seems to defeat the purpose of offering an "eco-friendly" bag. I'm not knocking the bag, it's great! I use and re-use cloth bags for my groceries all the time, but selling something like that and wrapping each and every one in plastic for shipping purposes...just seems to turn around a null the benefit of the bag to me?

In response to coyotemike:
not if you live in Texas!!!!

mmmm naked weather 11 months out of the year...

I enjoyed this article. Informative and thought provoking, thank you.

well done.

My goal for the next year is to just purchase as little as possible. If I need something, I'll first see if I can borrow it or buy it second-hand.

It seems rather silly to me that people expect to be all eco-friendly while still buying a fucktonne of useless shit.

slightly off topic but:

i've been looking for decent union made/fair trade, organic if possible men's dress shirts. most of the stuff i know about comes from shops like no sweat or moo shoes, but it seems difficult to track down fair trade dress shirts that aren't colored like grass or dirt...and actually fit well/look nice. and on top of that hell even just some organic fair trade textiles. i'll make my own shit if i have to.

any leads would be great! although i recycle and reuse and reduce and whatnot, now and then i need a new shirt, and i'd like to make sure it's not made with a child's tears and sweat...

none of that "gap kids...made for kids by kids" business if you please.

thank you Moby!



"Hemp Wearing Sheep" sounds like a truly amazing GM crop.

REI.com has quite a few eco-friendly clothing options. They range from organic cotton to recycled materials.

I think a better place to be concerned about would be electronics... a lot of people will keep clothes for years...but how many people keep a computer or a cell phone for years...with a cell phone, even for more than a year isn't all that likely for many people...and how many people recycle them when they are done with them...
There are a lot of far nastier things used in both the electronics themselves, not to mention used in making them then in any clothing, I'd bet...

And wrapping an eco- friendly cloth bag in plastic...that is pretty damn stupid...

I like this link.
thanks

A few DIY hints for you, if you find shirts that aren't quite the fit or colour you're looking for.

One easy way to re-tailor a dress shirt is to :
1. turn it inside out
2. pin the sides at a good fit
3. turn it right side out to check the fit,
4.turn it inside out again and sew up the sides where you pinned it.
4. cut of the excess and enjoy your shirt.

You can dye the shirt with natural products like used coffee grounds and pomegranate seeds.

You wanna borrow my underwear?

I just also found out that you can use coffee (not grounds but an actual pot of cold coffee) to stain a table!

Thanks for this article! To give a little perspective from the other side, I work for a small clothing company and we've been researching ways to make our product more eco-friendly. It's a lot more difficult than I would have expected. Everyone has a different opinion of what, exactly, makes a garment eco-friendly and we can't always verify what the mills tell us about their materials. We have joked that the best thing we could do for the environment is change our business model to convince people not to buy new clothes, but then we'd all be out of a job.

I think more people, including myself, need to learn how to sew. Making my own clothes out of old stuff would ALSO save me money, and the stress of looking at myself under the harsh lights of a clothing store dressing room.

Lets be really eco friendly all of us go naked therefore no impact, lets not eat anymore therefore no impact, walk use horses therefore no impact. All the things we need to live impact the inviroment in some way. Get real people.

I get a bunch of shit from Rawganique.com...it's mostly natural hemps and OCotton. When possible, I try to buy bamboo products if they're a viable alternative to what I need (cutting boards for instance)...I try to do my part, but I didn't realize most of what you said in the article. Hmm.

Naked - Sold
Not eating - ehh...or we could just eat more natural foods instead of processed shit food that helps to make us horrifically fat anyway. OMG! Shoot a deer during the season and stick it in your freezer? Absurd!! A community garden? I need to lay off the reefer.
Walk/use horses - good plan, actually. But the tradeoff there is the water and food flow that needs to go into sustaining the horse. Your best bet is to walk, ride a bike, or in cold climates XC ski (bamboo skis, of course). You city folk can use mass transit or just walk to where you need to get to (most of the time, I understand the need for other transportation as well)
How about instead of just resigning yourself to a defeatist attitude of "everything we do sucks anyway", you think of some ways to make it suck less? I ditched my SUV for a Sedan. I have LEDs around the house instead of incandescents. I've got Energy Star applicances. And I avoid driving when it's possible. Not only are all these things good for the environment, but they're GREAT for my checking account. After switching to LED lighting, my electric bill went from about $50 a month to about $25. Less driving means I pay less at the pump. Seriously, get real Mankarien

Hmmmm, me thinks someone works at Trader Joe's. If I am right, I love that store but can't stand how much produce is individually wrapped. I've written several e-mail to their 'contact' section on the website. Maybe if more people do the same they will change this practice. Otherwise, they sell good stuff.

Oh yes, you should see all the rings on my kitchen table. Those things will never go away! One even looks like a flower pattern...

Wait what-tha? Do you have the link to that. I want to try that now.
How cool is this?

dreamergirl, I don't have a link because I saw it on one of those home makeover on the cheap shows on Home Garden channel or something like that. This woman was just holding a pot of cold coffee, had a brush and said you could stain a (real) wood table.....I'm not sure about the other details...seems like one might be missing but...it's real!

Hey Sleepy Lady,

I dig some of your points but I'm confused.......... When you were talking about the chemicals in dry cleaning that cause cancer in rats the first thing I thought about was "well, we should be fine as long as we don't eat our clothes" and who are these chemicals dangerous to? The people handeling the chemicals or the people wearing the clothes after they've been treated with the chemicals.I guess these chemicals could seep in through pors in our skin but Just how much exposure to these chemicals is needed to cause cancer? I personally don't dry clean my clothes but I have friends that do quite frequently, how much is too much.

On the back of the little pink Sweet-n-Low packets it says that it has been known to cause cancer in labratory rats. However for a human you'd have to ingest a whole room full of sweet-n-low before you have to worry about anything.