Buy Eco Friendly Clothes
What is eco friendly clothing? What makes your t-shirt greener than the average shirt? No it isn’t just the green dye on it, it’s where it comes from, what it’s made of, who made it and how, what impact the use of the material has and how much carbon it took to get it from where it was made to you. In fact, there are quite a lot of things to consider here and not all eco friendly clothing shops will cover everything. Usually clothing defined as being eco friendly just means it has one or more eco attributes.
Organic Clothing
Unfortunately there is no standard organic guideline for us to ensure organic clothing is accurately labelled as such. Look out for the Soil Association mark on your clothing as this sets a good standard for organic goods in general. Many people are under the assumption that organic is synonymous with natural materials like cotton. Cotton actually accounts for one third of the world’s use of pesticides and organic cotton mostly means no bleaching agents were used rather than pesticides. Hemp clothing on the other hand is resistant naturally to pests and is becoming a more viable alternative for clothing.
Eco-Fleece
This type of eco friendly clothing is actually made from reclaimed plastic. It takes around 25 plastic 2 litre bottles to make one fleece so in purchasing one of these nifty winter warmers you are saving the landfill of yet more plastic.
Fair Trade Clothing
This clothing protects developing countries, fighting poverty by creating a fair trade for the goods produced. This type of clothing is made from materials bought at a price that covers the costs and creates profit for the workers to live on. Look out for the official fair trade mark on your eco friendly clothing.
3 Responses to “Buy Eco Friendly Clothes”
I’m glad you are sharing this, because most people don’t know what “green” means, and there are some dishonest companies out there that just want to make a profit!
By Miguel on Aug 8, 2008
My name is Rachel and I work for Fair Indigo. It is great to see people with the same passion for fair trade and organics as our company. Fair Indigo is a fair trade clothing company based outside of Madison, Wisconsin. We offer men’s, women’s and infant clothing. All of our products are fair trade in addition to some organics. You can visit our website at http://www.fairindigo.com for more information. Please let me know if you have any questions about Fair Indigo!
By Rachel on Aug 11, 2008
At first my reason for searching out organic cotton was medical.
At only a few weeks old my son developed severe eczema and his pediatrician suggested organic cotton as an alternative to the harsh steroidal creams they wanted to put him on. The search for organic clothing was not easy, and just plain expensive, but I knew his baby skin could not take the harsh chemicals used in regular textiles.
The more research I did, the more I knew our entire family needed to make a change, for us and the planet.
That was when I founded a company that supplies eco friendly clothing, and since it is a family adventure, the prices are very reasonable. ($12-$30) You will probably see the same products in your local boutique for twice as much, I know I did.
But best of all, after about 6 months of wearing organic, our baby has no sign of eczema.
By Peaceful Disorder on Sep 15, 2008