Opting for eco-friendly material (jersey cotton, organic satin and silk, etc.) is a nice way of doing your part to screw up the earth less. But buying green apparel from certain companies sometimes funds more than eco-conscious fashion. Sweatshops, for example.
Banana Republic and Macy’s – two recent additions to the green fashion bandwagon – had their wares manufactured by a factory that paid its employees $3.79 an hour for 66-hour, six-day workweeks until recently, when the Labor Department busted the facility for employee abuse. And it’s right here in Queens.
I honestly don’t know if any of Banana’s or Macy’s latest green apparel came from this Queens sweatshop, and I’m not saying eco-friendly fashion isn’t a good thing. But it’s not an exclusively good thing by virtue of its green-ness. Eco-friendly doesn’t mean people-friendly, and the earth’s effed up enough already. Maybe we should focus a little more on helping the people who make the clothes, instead of obsessing over the material they use to do their jobs.
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Well said!
While in some cases, green fashion is driven by self interest, one hopes the next step is looking beyond to interest in how not only the planet, but also the people are impacted!
When companies start claiming their clothes and materials are “eco-friendly”, sometimes we need to be careful and examine their claims closely. Where was the product sewn and by whom? It doesn’t matter how eco-cool a product is if it was illegally produced.
It’s quite a popular thing to claim that organic cotton, silk, etc. are inherently better than traditionally grown fibers, orthan synthetics, but we must consider inputs other than fertilizers and pesticides. How much water did each version consume? Was more labor required for one type? Did one crop need to be transported further?
I believe “sustainability” to be more important, on a long-term scale, than “green”. If a nylon product will last twice as long as a cotton or silk product, lengthening its useful life, then it may be a superior choice based on consumption metrics.
If being “eco-friendly” truly lessens the environmental impact (taking into account increased carbon costs such as handling and transportation) then it’s the way to go. If not, well, we need to come up with something better.
Nothing wrong with this, at all, people should get it more.