Global water and your cotton tee shirt

With hundreds of thousands of environmental groups worldwide and in this space age of the internet, its sometimes disappointing to note how little attention is paid to the textile industry and its montrous impact on the planet’s water.

I put the blame on the fact that non of us are willing to acknowledge that we as green minded as we say we are, that if we acknowledge being a part of this monster, that it will somehow discredit the labels we have given to ourselves as friends of the earth, savers of the planet, lovers of the ocean and warriors for rainforests.

Yet,the facts are indisputable and it doesn’t take an industry expert or insider to find out about the environmental damage caused by textiles, in particular, water pollution which is a very visible factor.

Taking the world’s most popular fibre as an example, we will examine the impact of cotton on the environment. Starting with the cultivation of the cotton fibre itself. The amount of cotton used in a single tee shirt consumers up to 1700 litres of clean water and this is only in its cultivation! The natural flows of rivers and streams in cotton growing countries like India,China,Egypt and Uzbhekhistan have been diverted to feed this thirsty crop. Uzbhekistan in particular holds top honors as its cotton fields turned the world’s 4th largest lake into a salty puddle today. Note that organic cotton uses the same quantity of water to grow. Environmental impacts like these have caused many to challenge cotton’s claim as a sustainable fibre,including this incident where the UK ruled that the US cotton council’s advertising of cotton as “sustainable” was misleading.

From there, the the thirsty cotton tee continues to waste another estimated 1000 litres of clean water in order to process the cotton balls into the tee shirt you’re wearing today.Faced with accusations of irreparable damage to the environment, the cotton industry has responded with a limited use of closed loop production where the waters used in its processes are cleaned,filtered and in some cases,even reused but this process has yet to make a meaningful impact on its overall harm as its too expensive to implement and the net gains are neglible at best. Oeco Textiles, a third party certification group lists a whopping 2000 chemicals in use as part of the process of making textiles. How can you clean the waters when there is that much chemicals in use?

You can’t. This is why rivers in China run blue from denim factories along its banks. The Yamuna River in India also has clothing factories to blame for its toxic waters. Waters so high in toxins its not even considered suitable for farm irrigation. China has recognised the dirty nature of the textile industry and has in recent years, abandoned its policies of supporting this one product that helped it build its massive economy. When over 1 billion of us does not have access to clean drinking water, now is the time to rethink what we’ve done.

So what can we, as tree huggers, ocean lovers and planet savers do to reduce the impact of cotton? Buy less or if you have to buy a new tee shirt, look for one that has a reduced water footprint. Recycled cotton fibres is a fairly new product that has a greatly reduced water consumption. It may not have the sleek handfeel of combed cotton but its definitely not the water hog that virgin cotton is.

Eco friendly clothing : a definition from ecoGear

The word ecofriendly as defined by the Oxford dictionary means being friendly to the environment. Having a net positive effect on it. This means that

you could have an ecofriendly lifestyle perhaps by planting trees in your neighbourhood or choosing to buy organically grown food products but you cannot have an eco friendly product as producing anything, will create an impact on the environment no matter how you made it.

The proper term for any products that have been processed, as opposed to an organically grown apple straight from the tree, should be an ecofriendly option or as the good folk at Terrachoice call it, environmentally preferable. An example would be in a case where you had to buy a new dress or jacket today, you opt for the ecofriendly option as opposed to the regular option.

And what makes an ecofriendly clothing? Is it organic cotton where the only redeeming factor is that it doesn’t use pesticides or agrichemicals in its cultivation? What about the fact that one single organic cotton tee uses up to 2500 litres of water just to grow? Whether organic or not, cotton is one thirsty plant and its cultivation single handedly dried up the world’s fourth largest lake, Lake Aral in Russia as all its tributaries were diverted in order to grow cotton*.

The people that made bamboo clothing jumped all over this point and made claims that bamboo not only requires zero pesticides and agrichemicals but uses less water in its cultivation. Did that make bamboo clothing ecofriendly? And what does anti bacterial features have to do with being ecofriendly? It was a good thing for the FTC to shut down all the eco claims they made**.

On top of that, no one so far has dared to open the can of worms to the public eye that involves the finishing processes in clothing.The cultivation of raw fibres may have been a more ecofriendly process but that’s a small percentage of clothing’s final impact on the environment.Unlike fruits or vegetables that are ecofriendly because they’re organically grown, when the raw clothing fibre is harvested, it goes through multiple processes all done by different factories from the raw fibre processer to the spinner to the dye house and finally the weaver or knitter. All these processes require copious amounts of energy, fresh clean water and loads of chemicals. Stripping the natural oils from the cotton ball for example usually calls for the use of heavy metals to speed up the process and bring consistency. In the case of bamboo textiles, sulphur dioxide is added to the pulp to speed up the melting process where the tough fibres are turned into a sludge before its extruded into a yarn.

The dyeing process is an even worse polluter of air and water. This report from 1999 lists all the emissions from the various dyeing and finishing processes in great detail. Even though there has been a push since for a more ecofriendly process with closed loop production systems, the fact remains that the biggest producers of clothing and textiles today are in places like India, China, Bangladesh etc where no such facilities or technology is available. Marks & Spencer, the venerable British store has led the push to go green in their textiles with solar powered factories and cotton fibre supplies from sustainably irrigated fields but does this make their clothing ecofriendly? Not according to the folks at Terrachoice, whose standards for eco clothing is that it must be from organically grown fibre and NOT dyed. According to their standards then, every clothing or textile item in the market that has been either yarn dyed( stripes,check patterns etc ) or solid dyes is not ecofriendly regardless whether its yarns were organically grown or not!

With all these issues in mind, is there such a thing as ecofriendly clothing? The products that come closest to being anywhere kind to planet earth is recycled fibres. Not so much the recycled plastic bottles or rePET as its commonly known as this product has also gone through the same dyeing and refinishing processes but recycled cotton scraps. The odds and ends from factories that are chopped back into short fibres for spinning into new yarns. The technology is not new and companies like Jimtex in the USA have been around for years. Another maker, 2ndNature yarns has a great list of eco savings for recycled cottons from chemical and energy savings to landfill diversion and land savings.

A word of caution here though, as amazing as recycled cotton sounds, you have to dig deeper into its manufacturing processes as recycled cotton yarns are almost always blended with synthetic fibres to improve the strength of the yarn. The most common one is acrylic which some makers dye unfortunately, in order to achieve color brilliance or consistency. The other synthetic fibre commonly used in recycled cotton blends is recycled PET or plastic bottles and it’s the same case here, some users of this fibre use a dyed rePET yarn for color whereas some will ask for the more ecofriendly option, the undyed version.

Last but not least, is how the up to this point, eco friendly clothing item is finished. We’ve seen products on the market covered with plastisol inks that should have been banned from this earth for all the phthalates, PVC and other noxins in them. Some people just don’t get it.

*ttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/04/aral-sea-almost-dried-up_n_524697.html
**http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt160.shtm

Eco clothing for the outdoor lover.

Most of us head into the outdoors to enjoy the wilderness of it all. The fresher air, the smells of new blooms and sounds that no audio system can reproduce exactly. We call ourselves nature lovers and for the most part, we are a crowd that is aware of the problems facing the natural environment including pollution and development that is increasingly narrowing down the green spaces that once was there.

Eco consciousness is a term used to describe this feeling and big business knows it. This is why the “Outdoors” market is booming in triple digits even as conventional markets continue to shrink from the depression of 2010.

Consumers however, are starting to wise up and question eco claims and in many instances, have had major brands changing their green tunes like this case of Porsche and its eco claims. The same backlash is happening to the Outdoors industry and the industry has responded with the creation of a group to set standards for its members. Aptly named the Sustainability Working Group( as in working towards sustainability ) the group covers every possible concern that could come out of any eco claims and provides guidance for its members who are cashing in on the Outdoors person and their love for nature.

The Eco Index is an impressive guide for their members and challenges all Outdoors brands and manufacturers to work towards the standards set here so that their products can truly be called eco friendly.

Looking a few of their key points :
-Select raw materials that require less energy and have a low carbon footprint throughout their lifetime.
-Select materials that minimize the amount of fresh water used and wastewater created through their lifetime.
-Select raw materials that contribute to significant positive changes in manufacturing and processing efficiencies.

The most common fibre used in Outdoor type apparel and gear today is polyester. The virgin stuff that’s made from oil and contributes hugely to pollution of air,land and water. To make it even more toxic, performance finishes are often added,whether to yarn or finished fabrics and anything that can repel rain water or food stains and block out wind, cannot be good for the environment. I’ve wondered about this for the longest time and have not been able to confirm what happens, when all this lamination and chemicals is boiled down and recycled into a new yarn that’s commonly known as rePET. Did the chemicals leave the sludge when it was boiled down? And how was the sludge disposed of? You’ll see guidelines in the Eco Index asking manufacturers to dispose of sludge responsibly. How is that done? If you bury it deep enough, it will disappear? Out of sight out of mind sort of thing?

Anyway, onto the next phase, now that the item has been produced and sold, the new considerations become care of the garment. SWG’s guide specifically advises members to “specify low impact care such as cold water wash, line dry and no dry cleaning!” The energy savings mentioned here are tremendous as the washing machine and hot air dryer are two of the biggest energy hogs in your house. More benefits like that amazing sundried smell and feel can be checked out on this laundry site.

Its easy enough if we’re dealing with a recycled polyester hoody or cotton tee shirt but what do you do with a fully lined and padded “eco outdoor” jacket? What’s a nature lover to do?

The true nature lover will reject products like these.Any product that calls for dry cleaning should be avoided at all costs. In our opinion, the nature lover will go back to the days when clothing was made simply and as naturally as you can make it. None of this performance,rain repellent,stain resistant product that leaves such a heavy imprint on the environment.

When the winds blow cold, the nature lover will add on a scarf and another layer of clothing to keep the warmth in. Not add on a synthetic layer of cloth that will wreak havoc on the environment in its manufacture, in its use and in its end fate.

Eco clothing for yoga.

There has been so much said about eco clothing for yoga and it makes sense. After all, in turning to yoga for better mental and physical health, one of the fundamentals we learn is to simplify our lives. Drive out the torrent of worries and fears that plague us daily and simply…live. To find relief in every deep breath we take, to draw energy from mother earth as we plant our soles firmly for the Mountain Pose.

We’ve seen so much written on organic cottons or bamboo yoga clothing that we had to say something here.

When we look at eco clothing, we examine the whole process of the item,lets call it the yoga tank as an example. How were the fibres obtained? Did any forests have to be cleared in order to plant the fibre? Or is it a man made fibre using oil based materials?
How was it dyed? And how much energy and carbon emissions was used in the dyeing? What happens with all the mucky water from the dye baths?

Most of the answers are pretty horrendous and the main reason we say that clothing is the second most polluting industry in the world, after oil.

Organic cottons starts off great but starts sliding into the pollution tank when they start washing and bleaching the fibres just to get it ready to dye! Its common knowledge that one tee shirt uses up to 22,000 litres of water just to get it to the store. With this sort of knowledge popping up into public domain recently, the industry has tried to counter with closed loop production where the dye waters are supposedly cleaned up before being discharged into our lakes and rivers. It all sounds great except they won’t tell you what they do with the hundreds of barrels of dye sludge that they skimmed off the dye waters…
Bamboo’s problem, when we were looking for a great all natural alternative to nylon and polyester for yoga clothing, was that non of the fabric makers could confirm exactly how much bamboo juice went into the fabric. None. Zero. It got to a point where the Competition Bureau finally shut down any eco claims by bamboo clothing as no one was able to tell them whether the fibre was indeed 100% from bamboo juice or maybe it was just a few drops of bamboo juice in a barrel of common rayon juice. That’s the example the Competition Bureau gave us anyway.

So, back to eco clothing for yoga. We started out with one version. Using 100% recycled fibres. 65% recycled cotton from cotton scraps that clothing factories were going to throw out. 35% recycled polyester from recycled water bottles.

Pretty cool right? It doesn’t stop there.

What makes our recycled cotton clothing so eco friendly is that no bleach is ever used and the colors are not dyed!

Those colors you see are from the colors already in the cotton clippings when they were picked up! Major savings in chemical, water and energy as we could skip all these processes and go from raw fibre to colored fabric!

But not everyone can tolerate the polyester content in our recycled fibres so we introduced a second collection under the Jute brand.

Why jute? Because its so readily available! Its planted in wetlands in China,India,Bangladesh and widely known to be one of the most sustainable fibre crops in the world as it takes no time to grow, uses no pesticides and the small farmers fertilise the fields by leaving the leaves on the fields!

It had amazing natural stretch and we spent months in development trying to make a stable fabric and after numerous tries, we finally gave in and accepted the fact that we had to add spandex to it for stability. It would have been so amazing to see it in its natural stretch though…one day, we may bring this to market still.

In the meantime, our eco yoga clothing in jute is the softest, fuzziest thing you will ever put against your skin. The first reaction we get from people is how cool it feels to the skin! This amazing fabric drapes like you wouldn’t believe and we’ve done well with it because it hugs you just right. Unlike nylons or polyesters that tend to squish and show every roll or bump, our yoga pieces were cut to only bring out the best parts of you and provides a soft cover for the rest of you!

You have to wear it to believe it! Eco clothing for yoga in both recycled cottons and jute is available here!

Green Party goes green with ecoGear tee shirts

Go go go, go greens!

I’ll be honest with you. This took a huge fat monkey off our backs!

For years we’ve been after green groups and companies to consider using the greenest tee shirt of them all, the ecoGear tee shirt from recycled cotton and recycled poly.

It was heartbreaking and hugely disappointing to have them choose other products because “ yours is a few dollars more than what we’re paying and it will hurt our fundraising bottomline.”

That’s a huge contradiction right there. Groups that call themselves green or groups that make their paychecks by saying they protect the environment CANNOT choose economy when the ecology is at stake! This turns whatever they claim to do into greenwashing because if you don’t watch the environmental footprints of your own group and its related actions and merchandise, how can you say you’re protecting the environment?

Then again, we don’t really blame them. Paychecks are important after all but most importantly is that none of us want to face the monster in all our closets. Ya, the clothing we all wear. Most of us know, especially those in the environmental protection business, about the massive destruction clothing wreaks upon the environment.

You get countries like Uzbekhistan being declared the environmental disaster of the century by the United Nations for its cotton growing. Rivers in India flow orange water from the dyestuffs. China’s Yangtze river flows blue from all the denim factories along its banks. Fish and animal species have all but disappeared from rivers and lakes where clothing factories discharge their chemicals. Bleach to turn the natural fibres white so they can be ready to dye. Dyestuffs. Then more bleach and enzymes to “soften” the clothing up before going to market. Not to mention the heavy metals and formaldehyde that always gets tossed into the dyeing and finishing processes of making tee shirts and jeans.

In recent months, we’ve been countered with “oh, we process our organic clothing in closed loop production systems where all the waste waters are treated before being released.” Sounds good right? Definitely eco but what they don’t tell you is that when you treat waste waters from dyeing clothing, there is a lot of inert dyestuffs, chemicals etc that are caught in filters or if they use a different capture process, more chemicals are added to the waste waters so that the dead dyestuffs etc are bonded together into a sludge. So they’ll skim the sludge off the surface…what happens to it? No one will tell us.

The point is, to make eco clothing in 2010, with the technology that is available, you don’t have to plant new crops to grow fibres. There is no need to go redye anything and burn up tons of coal and use fresh drinking water for it. There is recycled cotton and our stuff has such a nice handfeel, most people wouldn’t believe it when we tell them its 100% recycled fibres. They look at us like we’re the biggest greenwashers there is.

We could go on but we have another post just beggin to be written.So we’ll close it off with a big thank you to Peter Ormond, Green Party candidate for Hamilton Ontario, for going green with us!

Is there such a thing as eco outdoor clothing??

We're preparing to introduce what will be world's first eco outdoor clothing collection using our recycled fibres.

Working with the Sustainability Group out of Europe gave us a lot of insight into what other brands are doing wrong and how not to greenwash. A lot of clothing brands have already cashed into the outdoor lovers desire to be ecofriendly and to support eco clothing. HOwever, most of the brands and products talk up a good green talk without supporting product.

Recycled polyesters are great if you don't end up redyeing them! Polyester is one of the harder fabrics to dye and takes extreme high heat and toxic dyestuffs to color the yarns, even the newer generation rePET yarns that are supposed to be easier to dye. Even with the introduction of closed loop production, where dye waters are supposedly treated before being released back into the world, the dye houses are not clear as to what they do with all the sludge that is created from the inert dyestuff.So its buried somewhere and hope no one sees it?

One of the all time favorite beefs has to be the performance finishes that are added. You simply cannot have eco outdoor clothing that has had nano finishes or repellent chemicals added to make the clothing water or wind repellent. Such a product maybe a performance product and great for keeping the elements out but it is not an eco product!

In our opinion, the outdoor lover,whether its a weekend camper or day hiker, is prepared to make some sacrifices for personal comfort so that they can be truly friendly to the earth. Bundle up and pile on the layers to keep the wind out!The trees and the streams will love you for it as they would have seen that the clothing on your back did not cause any trees to be cut or waters polluted.

The great thing about making eco clothing from recycled cottons is that the process uses no new dyestuff. All the colors come from first life cotton clippings that are picked off factory floors and sorted by color before being processed.Less energy.Less water.Less emissions.Less chemicals. How much more eco can you get?

With the technology that is now available to make use of 100% recycled fibres, there are no excuses to take small steps in the right direction. We have arrived at the end of the journey for eco clothing and coming for the Fall 2010 season, we will show the world how a truly eco friendly outdoor clothing collection is made.Love green.Go recycled.

Remembrance Day everyday

We introduced a new tee shirt today in support of war veterans. Aptly named “Fading Memories” the graphics show a faded image of the helmet,boot and rifle, an image synonymous with fallen soldiers. To add to the symbolism, the image is printed on the wearer’s left chest as a sign of heartfelt sincerity with the message “ I remember.”

While stories and news of war veterans was in headlines recently as part of the 65th anniversary of VE day, other headlines tell a different story of the Canadian government’s recent actions to reduce the benefits it pays to its war veterans.

The timing to introduce this shirt in August is purely coincidental,we have long wanted to make a tee shirt to honor those that gave their lives for our freedom today and to honor those who continue to risk their lives so that we may remain free. I have the freedom today for free speech and criticism without fear of being thrown in jail, freedom to protest injustice without fear of being shot down. Freedom to practise whatever religion I like. Freedom to a mixed race marriage. Little things that most of us take for granted especially if we were born in North America. We held off this shirt as it didn’t feel right to sell a shirt with such a heavy emotional attachment without it benefitting the war veterans somehow. We urge everyone that is thinking of buying a tee shirt today, to buy this shirt. Rather than wearing a shirt with some company’s logo splashed across it, make a statement about your freedom and help us make every day Remembrance Day.”

A portion of profits from the sale of this remembrance day tee goes to support a London,Ontario based veterans association, Remember November 11 whose mission is to help honour the heroes of Canada’s Armed Forces, educate people about their actions and help guide the country with a variety of ways to honour the fallen Canadian Soldier. The memories of what the war veterans did for us is slowly fading in our generation’s memories as less and less of WW11 vets attend Remembrance Day parades. Those memories will be gone for sure for the younger generations unless we go out and inform the kids of the sacrifices millions of men and women made for the freedom we enjoy today.