Sustainable Textiles 2

Nirmali de Silva

What are the Millennium Development Goals?

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals to be achieved by 2015 that respond to the world's main development challenges.

Millennium Development Goals

The MDGs are drawn from the actions and targets contained in the Millennium Declaration that was adopted by 189 nations and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000.

The eight MDGs

• Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

• Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

• Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

The eight MDGs contd….

• Goal 5: Improve maternal health

• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

• Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

• Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Goal 7:

Ensure environmental sustainability

Means…

Ethical Fashion is an umbrella term to describe ethical fashion design, production, retail and purchasing.

Ethical Fashion

Ethical Fashion…..

It covers a range of issues such as working conditions, exploitation, fair trade, sustainable production, the environment and animal welfare.

Why is Ethical Fashion needed now?

The high street clothing industry accounts for a massive share of Western retail. Every year, 100 million shoppers visit London's Oxford Street alone.

'STAY ALIVE IN 85'T-shirt

Katherine Hamnett1984

Red-silkMuseum no. T.594-1996Katherine Hamnett is a

British fashion designer who has used her position to help

promote peace and ecological issues, most

notably through her use of environmentally friendly

fabrics and her much copied, printed slogan T-shirts,

introduced in 1983

Globalisation means…

that materials and labour can be purchased in different parts of the world where costs are very low.

Globalisation means…

Also, industrialised methods of growing cotton mean that fabrics can be produced quickly and cheaply and in very large quantities.

Globalisation means…

These savings are passed on to the customer, meaning that high street fashion is available at increasingly low prices and much of it is regarded as disposable.

However, Ethical Fashionistas would argue that all this has a cost that we are not able to see on the price tag.

Some of the issues around Ethical Fashion

Ethical Fashion aims to address the problems it sees with the way the fashion industry currently operates, such as exploitative labour, environmental damage, the use of hazardous chemicals, waste and animal cruelty.

Issues……

Serious concerns are often raised about exploitative working conditions in the factories that make cheap clothes for the high street.

Examples

Concerns…

Child workers, alongside exploited adults, can be subjected to violence and abuse such as forced overtime, as well as cramped and unhygienic surroundings, bad food and very poor pay. 

The low cost of clothes on the high street means that less and less money goes to the people who actually make them.

Concerns…

Cotton provides much of the world's fabric, but growing it uses 22.5% of the world's insecticides and 10% of the world's pesticides, chemicals which can be dangerous for the environment and harmful to the farmers who grow it. (Ethical Fashion Forum)

Concerns…

Current textile growing practices are considered unsustainable because of the damage they do to the immediate environment.  For example, the Aral Sea in Central Asia has shrunk to just 15% of its former volume, largely due to the vast quantity of water required for cotton production and dyeing. (Ethical Fashion Forum)

Concerns…

Most textiles are treated with chemicals to soften and dye them, however these chemicals can be toxic to the environment and can be transferred to the skin of the people wearing them.

Hazardous chemicals used commonly in the textile industry are: lead, nickel, chromium IV, aryl amines, phthalates and formaldehyde. (Greenpeace)

Concerns…

The low costs and disposable nature of high street fashion means that much of it is destined for incinerators or landfill sites. 

The UK alone throws away 1 million tonnes of clothing every year. (Waste Online)

Concerns…Many animals are farmed to supply fur for the fashion industry and many people feel that their welfare is an important part of the Ethical Fashion debate. The designer Stella McCartney does not use either fur or leather in her designs. In an advert for the animal rights organisation PETA, she said: 'we adress... ethical or ecological... questions in every other part of our lives except fashion. Mind-sets are changing, though, which is encouraging.'

Jill Danyelle works on creative projects dealing with the ecology of our lives. One of her projects, fiftyRX3, was a website about style and sustainability. It consisted of a photo documentary of what she wore everyday for a year with a goal of averaging fifty percent sustainability based on the environmental mantra 'reuse, reduce, recycle'

Elizabeth Laskar is the founder and Director of the Ethical Fashion Forum and one of the few Ethical Fashion Image & Life style consultants in the UK.

Matilda Lee is the author of the book Eco Chic: the Savvy Shopper’s Guide to Ethical Fashion and the Consumer Affairs Editor at the Ecologist magazine. She is also part of the team behind Estethica, London Fashion Week’s ethical fashion exhibition.

Nichola Prested runs a group blog called Wardrobe Refashion where participants take a pledge to abstain from buying new manufactured clothing and instead, they refashion second hand clothing or make their own from scratch using recycled or good quality fabrics and yarns.

Lucy Shea is the Strategy Director at Futerra Sustainability Communications. She is also the founder of Swishing.org, a party concept where 'groups of friends get together to swap gorgeous clothes and party at the same time'.

Refashion: Junky Styling

Junky Styling was formed in 1997 by Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager who made clothes for themselves to wear out to clubs in the early 90’s during their late teens.

Everything Junky Styling produce is recycled from the best quality second hand clothing, deconstructed, re-cut and completely transformed into a new product that belies the former identity of the raw material.

All products stocked in the Junky Store are either recycled, fair trade, made from organic materials or ethically produced. They hope to inspire all their customers to look at their discarded clothes and general waste items with fresh eyes and a resourceful frame of mind.

How to: Side Way Jumper Top

Annika from Junky Styling shows how to make an asymmetrical Side Way Jumper Top from two old polo neck jumpers.

How to Make a UD-Shrug

Annika from Junky Styling shows how to make this stylish UD (or upside-down) shrug from an old cardigan.

How to Make a Bat-Back Jumper/Dress

Learn how to make a Bat-Back Jumper/Dress from two old pre worn jumpers

Ethical Fashion Links

• Centre for Sustainable Fashion • Environmental Justice Foundation • Estethica • Ethical Fashion Forum • Adili • Ethics Girl • Greenmystyle.com • Guardian Ethical Directory

• The International Fair Trade Association

• Labour Behind the Label

• Make do and Mend

• My Fashion Footprint: Is your Wardrobe Bad for the Planet? (article in the Independent)

• Noir

• Pesticide Action Network

• RE:Fashion Awards

• Swishing

• Thread

• TreeHugger

• University for the Creative Arts (Epsom) - MA Ethical Fashion

• War on Want

KFC fined over cockroach discovery

Yesterday, 01:51 pm

Yesterday, 01:51 pm

• Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has been ordered to pay out almost £19,000 after a cockroach was found eating a chip in one of the busiest branches in Britain.

• The insect was seen on a food dispensing counter near takeaway boxes and tongs used to serve chicken by an environmental health officer in a restaurant in London's West End.

• City of Westminster Magistrates' Court heard that, during an inspection at the Leicester Square branch, the officer also saw a mouse, flies and dried chicken blood on the floor. The Westminster City Council inspector also said there was no hand wash in dispensers in the food preparation area.

• "There was no soap in the ground-floor food preparation room so, on the day of the inspection at least, it was not possible for food preparation staff to wash their hands properly," said Michael Goodwin, prosecuting.

• The fast food giant admitted breaching five hygiene rules after the inspection in August 2008. Mr Goodwin said that, four months prior to the inspection, the branch received a "specific warning" from the council voicing concerns about hygiene practices. David Whiting, mitigating, said the company took the inspection "very seriously".

• "KFC accepts the condition that has been described to you," he said. "They fell below their own high standards and below legal standards."

• Mr Whiting said that, since the inspection, the outside contractor employed to deal with pest control problems has had its hire agreement with KFC terminated across the UK. Mr Whiting added that, on the day of inspection, an employee had simply forgotten to refill the soap in the dispensers in the preparation room and there were still places where hands could be washed.

• The Coventry Street outlet, which employs 65 people and operates from 10am to 3am, has since undergone a £600,000 refurbishment.

• At a hearing in April, the firm, based in Woking, Surrey, pleaded guilty to failure to keep the premises clean, not keeping the building maintained and in good repair and not having adequate procedures in place to prevent pest control. It also admitted failure to ensure that the layout, design and construction permitted good food hygiene practices and failure to ensure that materials for cleaning hands were available at hand basins.

• District Judge Howard Riddle fined the food chain £11,000 for the five offences. He also ordered it to pay £7,927.80 in costs and a victim surcharge of £15.