Shopping for the Environment

  • Posted on 31 March 2006
  • By Gina K. Thornburg

Eco-Friendly Clothing Requires Research, but it's Worth the Clean Conscience

As an environmentalist, I find it hard to enjoy clothes shopping these days. Three words on a label tell me enough about a garment's backstory to make me want to return it to the rack. Was it 'Made in Bangladesh'? Or the Dominican Republic? Maybe Indonesia? That little label tells me my intended impulse buy is hitched to exploited workers and poor environmental practices in the developing world.

Tired of the guilt I invariably feel when I buy outsourced garments of questionable provenance, I embarked on a quest to find out how to change my clothes-buying habits to better suit a green ethic.

Back to the Source

The first thing to do is to consider the fabric.

Most Sierra Club members understand the connection between organic food and the environment: produce and meat raised without chemical inputs are naturally easier on the surrounding soil, air, water, and vegetation where they are grown. The same holds true for the cultivation of plants harvested for fiber. Take cotton, for example.

Although the acreage of cotton production is just 2.4 percent of the world's arable land, cotton cultivation accounts for 11 percent of all pesticides used every year. To make matters worse, when conventional cotton is processed, resins, plasticizers, and more chemicals are added to the fabric, rendering the designation '100% cotton' questionable, according to Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard in his book, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. The toxicity of cotton cultivation and processing motivated Patagonia to switch, in 1996, to organic cotton for all of its cotton garments.

The most widely-recognized clothing manufacturer to promote organic fibers, Ventura, Calif.-based Patagonia now has plenty of company. L.A.-based American Apparel recently introduced an organic cotton line, and many smaller U.S. businesses trade only in clothing made from organic cotton, pesticide-free hemp, and other eco-friendly fibers, like organic wool, in spite of added labor costs in their cultivation. Just as organic food carries a higher sticker price, so do clothes made of organic fibers.

'I think it's always going to be a higher-end product,' said Jeff Joseph, owner of 4HEMP, a retail clothing store in Venice, Calif. 'Everything you make organically with so-called ethics is going to be more expensive, especially if it's made in America.' Concern over the pollution created by the apparel industry spurred Joseph to launch his store three years ago. 4HEMP's garments are made of hemp, tencel (a fabric manufactured out of wood pulp), or organic cotton. Soy-based fabric will soon join the mix.

Organic natural fibers are not the only eco-friendly materials around. Fabrics made from recycled plastic beverage bottles make durable outdoors clothing. Patagonia was a pioneer in the use of these fabrics, working with South Carolina-based textile manufacturer Wellman Inc., which developed the 100% certified recycled polyester.

Labor, Apparel, and the Environment

The next thing to do on a quest for eco-friendly clothing is to consider where and how the garment is made.

Since 1992, the American apparel industry has largely moved offshore. 'Everyone equates this great exodus with cheap labor, but there's this whole environmental side of it,' says Bená Burda, owner of Maggie's Organics/Clean Clothes, Inc., an Ypsilanti, Michigan-based purveyor of women's clothing made from organic cotton and sustainably grown hemp.

In other words, countries with lax labor laws also have lax environmental statutes.

'If you go to China, or Peru, or Nicaragua, the dye water [for fabrics] is just released into the groundwater,' Burda said. 'There is so much contamination in developing nations.'

Burda founded her apparel business in 1992 to 'save land' from environmental damage caused by conventional cotton growing. Using U.S.-grown organic cotton, she contracted with U.S. apparel companies. Years of inconsistent quality and textile-plant closures, however, forced Burda to rethink her commitment to U.S. manufacturing. She also hated the way U.S. employers treated their employees.

Deciding to go offshore, but only if it meant not using sweatshop labor, Burda entered into a partnership with a nongovernmental organization called the Center for Development in Central America with operations in Nicaragua. Together with a group of desperately poor women displaced by Hurricane Mitch, the NGO and Maggie's Organics helped found a worker-owned sewing cooperative. The Nicaraguan women built the co-op with their own hands, while grant money helped supply them with the sewing equipment needed to start the business.

In an area where the unemployment rate is near 80 percent, the women who own and run the Maquilador Mujeres cooperative produce most of Maggie's Organics apparel. Because they own the cooperative, they negotiate their own fees, which are three times higher than those earned by the approximately 40,000 other garment workers in Nicaragua.

In the near future, Burda wants to help launch similar worker-owned cooperatives in the United States.

In San Diego County, Hempy's, a wholesaler and retailer of hemp, organic cotton, and recycled synthetics clothing and accessories, has forged lasting relationships with family-owned sewing shops nearby. Nearly 90 percent of Hempy's products are made by these small businesses, said founding owner Albert Lewis.

'We've worked with the same families for 10 years,' Lewis said. 'We know who's making [our products]. They're good, strong, tight relationships.'

Lewis must import the hemp fabric from Romania or China, the two countries that currently account for most of the global supply. But he believes in keeping the jobs local as much as possible.

Reclaimed, Reused Clothing

Finally, consider not buying anything new to start with. Thrift shops, consignment stores, and garage sales all yield perfectly wearable pieces. But old clothes don't have to be worn by someone else in order to be reused. They can be literally recycled, and I don't mean turned into quilts (although that's not a bad idea).

Last fall, Patagonia launched a garment recycling program that involves taking customers' worn-out Capilene undergarments, breaking them down, and creating new apparel (for full details, go to the company's website, listed in the sidebar).

Sue Burns' turned a sweater-shrinking-in-the-dryer mishap into a brand new type of organic clothing business. Dubbed baabaaZuzu, the Leland, Michigan-based company manufactures women's apparel items out of wool reclaimed from local Goodwill stores.

Every two to three months, Burns purchases 4,000 to 6,000 pounds of wool clothing that Goodwill rotates off its sales floors and would otherwise send to local dumps.

'When I look at the amount of wool that would be lying in a landfill, absolutely worthless, it's amazing,' Burns said. 'It's still really useful fabric.'

She and her employees then run the wool through a high-heat wash, which changes its properties, sometimes making the wool more like felt, sometimes making it stiff and sturdy.

Burns then designs products to suit the transformed properties of the reclaimed wool. Not only does she employ about 10 people in her warehouse, she also contracts with four home-based workers who perform some hand sewing.

'We live in a naturally beautiful place,' she said. 'It's always right in your face. We want to preserve it, to make sure this is here tomorrow.'

It's time to kiss those impulse buys goodbye.

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Gina K. Thornburg is an adjunct instructor of geography at Glendale Community College and freelance environmental writer.

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