Dear EarthTalk: Can you enlighten on the environmental impact of the fashion industry? As I understand it, the industry overall is no friend to the environment.

According to the non-profit Earth Pledge, today some 8,000 synthetic chemicals are used throughout the world to turn raw materials into textiles. Domestically, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that one-quarter of all pesticides used nationwide go toward growing cotton, primarily for the clothing industry. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers many domestic textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators; and lax standards and enforcement in developing countries, where the majority of textiles are produced, means that untold amounts of pollution are likely being deposited into local soils and waterways in regions that can hardly stand further environmental insult.

Luz Claudio, writing in Environmental Health Perspectives, considers the way Americans and Europeans shop for clothes as “waste couture”: Fashion is low-quality and sold at “prices that make the purchase tempting and the disposal painless.” Yet this sort of so-called “fast fashion” leaves a pollution footprint, with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and occupational hazards.

According to Technical Textile Markets, a quarterly trade publication, demand for man-made fibers such as petroleum-derived polyester has nearly doubled in the last 15 years. “The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of crude oil,” reports Claudio. In addition, she says, the processes emit volatile organic compounds and solvents, particulate matter, acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, and other production by-products into the air and water.

“Issues of environmental health and safety do not apply only to the production of man-made fabrics,” says Claudio, citing subsidies to the pesticide-laden cotton industry that keep prices low and production high.

In an effort to green up the industry, Earth Pledge launched its FutureFashion initiative in 2005 to promote the use of renewable, reusable and non-polluting materials and production methods. Besides putting on its own FutureFashion showcases, the group organized the January 2008 New York Fashion Week, encouraging designers to create and showcase greener clothing on their runway models. Green-leaning designers can also pick through Earth Pledge’s library of 600 sustainably produced textiles, including organic cotton as well as exotic materials such as sasawashi, pina, bamboo, milk protein, and sea leather.

Another effort underway to speed the fashion industry into a carbon-constrained future is the Ethical Fashion Forum, which provides a variety of tools and resources and runs training sessions and networking events to help facilitate moving the industry towards more sustainable practices.

One stumbling block to the greening of fashion is that only a small number of consumers—some analysts say less than one percent—will pay more for a greener shirt. But if the industry itself can improve its footprint from the inside and drive the costs of more eco-friendly materials and processes down, the benefits will trickle down to consumers, whether they are bargain-conscious or fashion-conscious.

CONTACTS: Environmental Health Perspectives, www.ehponline.org; Earth Pledge, www.earthpledge.org; Ethical Fashion Forum, www.ethicalfashionforum.com.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Post from: The Good Human

The Environmental Impact Of The Fashion Industry.

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Today’s college students are shockingly very busy.  We have Facebook messages to write and photos from last night’s party to upload, tabloid blogs to read, and mindless thoughts to tweet.  It’s crucial to read textsfromlastnight.com every morning, in case one of our friends quotes it – and we have not read it yet! (how terrible!) And if that’s not enough, we have to go to the occasional class, study and probably eat.  It’s only logical then that we push out silly hobbies like world news and global issues.  Who is the Secretary General of the United Nations? I have no idea! But have you seen this hilarious video on Youtube where babies dance to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”?

While this is a generally accepted view of American college students, a strong opposition crusade is growing back here in Massachusetts.  The Commonwealth is historic for starting movements from The American Revolution to gay marriage and universal healthcare.  Anti-apathy will be no different.  My name is Dan Abrams and I am three things: a student at Northeastern University, Boston & New Media Coordinator for The Leadership Campaign and most importantly, a climate warrior.

The Leadership Campaign (The LC) is a network of students and allies standing up for the most pressing issue facing humanity today: Global Climate Disruption.  ”Global Warming” “Climate Change”…call it what you will but there is no denying the severity of the issue.  We at The LC believe that our elected leadership in government is lacking the very characteristic that defines their job description: the ability to lead.  We have yet to see accurate, serious and legitimate solutions to global climate disruption in any level of government. And, unfortunately, we do not have time for “environmental politics as usual.”

For most of us, we do not get the choice of what powers our homes.  Every day as people live, eat, and sleep in their homes, they are involuntarily harming the environment by pouring carbon in the atmosphere by the ton.  Because our lack of choice leaves us subject to the only option: fossil fuels.  And if we do get choices, the choice is not what power, but whose power, and we overwhelmingly choose the cheapest.  We are forced into this conundrum and we have no easy way to get out.

So, students from across the state are doing something mostly unheard of: taking responsibility for our actions and creating change.

Hundreds of students and community members are mobilizing from as far as Amherst College to Harvard University and are refusing to sleep in our homes that are powered by dirty electricity, until the government has a plan in place to power them by clean electricity.  We define “clean” electricity as any source of power that does not emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  We are calling on Governor Patrick to introduce, and his legislature to pass, a bill that will repower Massachusetts with 100% clean electricity in ten years.  We are giving our state until December 7th (first day of international climate negotiations in Copenhagen) to pass this bill.

Every day Monday- Saturday we sleep out on sites at over 25 campuses and community sites throughout the state.  On Sunday’s participants travel to The Boston Common to rally and sleep out. We wake up Monday mornings and lobby the state legislature with our bill that will repower the state with 100% clean electricity in ten years.  

We’ve had an interesting campaign so far, chock-filled with spontaneous public dancing and (because it is illegal to be on the Common after 11PM) 3AM wake-up calls by the Boston Police Department. This week our campaign gets even sweeter:  Dr. James Hansen, leading climate scientist at NASA and author of the paper that first publicized 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide as the maximum density of carbon that can be in our atmosphere to keep the world as we know it.   He will be rallying with us on the Common at 3:50PM, sleeping-out with us, and then lobbying and holding a press conference the following Monday morning.  And the week after that, Bill McKibben, prominent environmentalist and founder of 350.org and the International Day of Climate Action, will be leading a march from a climate conference at MIT to the Boston Common with scores of community members and will be spending the night with us as well.

New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman said this summer, “ Attention all young Americans: your climate future is being decided right now in the cloakrooms of the Capitol, where the coal lobby holds huge sway. You want to make a difference? Then get out of Facebook and into somebody’s face. ” Well, Mr. Friedman, my generation here seems to be getting off Facebook and we are heading outside. Each day more and more students and community members join our fight. We believe that science needs to once again dictate public policy and not backdoor dealings.  Now is the time to solve global climate disruption.  We cannot afford to wait any longer for serious solutions before consequences are irreversible. It is about time that we hold our politicians accountable for creating the necessary legislation to get us out of this mess.  

And, I know for certain that I do not want to have to look in my kids’ eyes and tell them, “I’m sorry. I should have tried harder.”

Post from: The Good Human

Massachusetts College Students Sleep-Out For Their Future.

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Stores are prohibited from selling bottled water and local business will refill any reusable water bottles for free. The town will also be installing water fountains on Main Street to encourage locals to drink the tap water. This just keeps getting better! From the Telegraph in the UK:

Huw Kingston, a local businessman and organiser, said almost 400 people turned up to the Bundanoon Memorial Hall, with only two casting dissenting votes.

“It was the biggest ever turnout in the community here at Bundanoon – it’s overwhelming support,” he said. “We can now continue with our route of making Bundanoon Australia’s first bottled water-free town.

We here in the United States need to encourage our towns and cities to consider bans like this as well, as the environmental impact of all this plastic is only starting to show itself to us all. Get yourself a reusable bottle and stop the bottled water habit today.

Thank you to tiny Bundanoon, Australia for showing us the way on this!

Post from: The Good Human

The First Bottled-Water Ban In The World Is In Bundanoon, Australia.

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Dear EarthTalk: Do you have current facts and figures about how much rainforest is being destroyed each day around the world, and for what purpose(s)?

Pinning down exact numbers is nearly impossible, but most experts agree that we are losing upwards of 80,000 acres of tropical rainforest daily, and significantly degrading another 80,000 acres every day on top of that. Along with this loss and degradation, we are losing some 135 plant, animal and insect species every day—or some 50,000 species a year—as the forests fall.

According to researcher and writer Rhett Butler, who runs the critically acclaimed website, Mongabay.com, tropical rainforests are incredibly rich ecosystems that play a key role in the basic functioning of the planet. They help maintain the climate by regulating atmospheric gases and stabilizing rainfall, and provide many other important ecological functions.

Rainforests are also home to some 50 percent of the world’s species, Butler reports, “making them an extensive library of biological and genetic resources.” Environmentalists also point out that a quarter of our modern pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, but less than one percent of the trees and plants in the tropics have been tested for curative properties. Sadly, then, we don’t really know the true value of what we’re losing as we slash, burn, and plant over what was once a treasure trove of biodiversity.

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), overall tropical deforestation rates this decade are 8.5 percent higher than during the 1990s. While this figure pertains to all forests in the world’s tropics, researchers believe the loss of primary tropical rainforest—the wildest and most diverse swaths—has increased by as much as 25 percent since the 1990s.

Despite increased public awareness of the importance of tropical rainforests, deforestation rates are actually on the rise, mostly due to activities such as commercial logging, agriculture, cattle ranching, dam-building and mining, but also due to subsistence agriculture and collection of fuel wood. Indeed, as long as commercial interests are allowed access to these economically depressed areas of the world, and as long as populations of poor rural people continue to expand, tropical rainforests will continue to fall.

Some scientists see light at the end of the tunnel. Joseph Wright of the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute says the tropics now have more protected land than in recent history, and believes that large areas of tropical forest will remain intact through 2030 and beyond: “We believe that the area covered by tropical forest will never fall to the exceedingly low levels that are often predicted and that extinction will threaten a smaller proportion of tropical forest species than previously predicted.”

Only time will tell whether Wright’s optimistic predictions ring true, or whether a more doomsday scenario will play out. To stay informed and be part of the solution, stay tuned to the websites of Rainforest Action Network, Rainforest Alliance, the Rainforest Site and, of course, Mongabay.com.

CONTACTS: Mongabay, www.mongabay.com; Rainforest Alliance, www.rainforestalliance.org; Rainforest Action Network, www.ran.org; Rainforest Site, www.rainforestsite.com; FAO, www.fao.org.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Post from: The Good Human

How Much Rainforest Is Destroyed Each Day?

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