Making Good

Fabric Made in America from NearSea Naturals

A wonderful new initiative from NearSea Naturals: American Grown*Spun*Milled. This truly is the new (old) frontier: U.S. domestic textile production, in healthy, safe, sustainable fashion.

 

Meaningful Standards for Sustainable Apparel

I learned of two significant developments today in sustainable apparel; both will help to add credibility to sustainability claims. Thanks to Harmony for alerting me to both links.

First, a new group called the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which includes major retailers, manufacturers, and environmental groups, plans to create a scoring system for garments to give buyers a complete view of the environmental impact of their purchase. Read the New York Times article here.

Second, an update to the Global Organic Textile Standard has been released. You'll find information here. GOTS is a voluntary standard for textiles made from fibers grown to organic crop and livestock standards.

The limited use of credible standards and meaningful certification and the plethora of weak marketing claims such as "eco-friendly" for apparel, have hindered the growth of this market, and given consumers good reason to be skeptical. Both of today's developments offer hope for improvement.

In other news, I'll be attending the ISEND conference on natural dyes in La Rochelle, France, in late April. I look forward to learning a lot; the program is wide-ranging and very full and interesting. Look for blog updates!

 

Living Wages

The New York Times has a good article about an apparel manufacturer paying living wages, because it's the right thing to do.