Green Cotton

A quiet revolution is starting in the fashion industry one mouse click at a time, which may chisel away at monolithic brand dominance. Web 2.0 is seeping into online apparel through retailers such as threadless.com which offer products driven by and/or created by the marketplace, e.g. consumers.

With its thousands of users not only creating its T-shirt designs, but also rating designs and eventually buying them, Threadless is a great example of a flourishing e-fashion marketplace. Threadless.com relies exclusively on its web users and customers to create, upload and rate designs. The best designs get produced and sold. Users rate the designs, e.g. anyone can rate the designs for free. With thousands of users, the model is sustainable and effective for ensuring adequate demand for supply.

As such, threadless demonstrates a near perfect supply-demand nexus with demand directly linked to supply and vice versa: the more popular the T-shirts, the more they produce. Incentives are built in to ensure optimal design submissions. Winning designs receive $2000 cash, plus a $500 gift certificate, as well as an additional $500 every time their design is reproduced.

The e-marketplace is perfect for not only incentivizing designers to create the next hottest look, but also for encouraging designers to go the next step and market and eventually sell as many of their shirts as they can. As such, threadless does not own nor contract any fashion designers themselves. Their users are their designers. And they appear to be doing exceedingly well.

What’s interesting is that while I as expecting an ‘itunes’ store, or Amazon.com ratings arrangement, whereby the site informs users which T-shirts are the most popular, the site refrains from doing this explicitly. The only information provided is how many people voted on an item. It does not tell you what the composite (or average) score is. It appears that threadless.com wants you to blindly vote, or rather to vote with your honest opinion, uninfluenced by others.While this is an interesting model, I must say that it also has its downsides.

For someone without a lot of time (a.k.a. myself), who does not want to sift through 379 Tee-shirt designs, I find it very unappealing to not know which ones are more popular than others. It would be helpful to know which are the top hits – and then spend the 5 minutes or so, clicking through those. However, honestly, while there were some really innovative and exquisitely designed Tee’s in the store, there was also a lot of crap, too. It would therefore be useful for threadless to either:

1. Reveal the composite (average) score on T-shirts, or
2. Do some of design prioritizing so that viewers can view just the top 25 or so.

Nonetheless, threadless has created a flourishing marketplace with thousands of interesting and unique designs. The best of the best are produced and sold, and I believe they are the first of many on-line (e-fashion) stores to emerge in this kind of market paradigm. Expect to see more such stores, and likely beyond fashion as well.

Photo source: www.threadless.com

Patagonia recently launched an incredible consumer innovation: their Footprint Chronicles. This dynamic application, which uses video, text and imagery, walks users through the step-by-step process of product development from field to storefront. The organic cotton polo shirt is one great example on their site,

Much to my surprise, Patagonia has been using organic cotton since 1996. More than a decade ago, Patagonia began pushing its suppliers to not only coming up with a 100% organic cotton shirt, but also ensure that workers were fairly paid with socially, environmentally friendly conditions (as evidenced in thier video series).

I encourage you to check out the fascinating application - The Footprint Chronicles, which is one of the first significant moves by a major apparel company to demonstrate near 100% transparency in production processes and environmental disclosure. Patagonia even invites customers to review their supply chain process and send comments or questions. For a company of the size of Patagonia to be doing this, I would have to conclude that they deserve a huge thumbs up. Their holistic and transparent approach to the business, from design all the way though distribution is remarkable.

In the case of the organic cotton polo shirt, Patagonia begins their process in Ventura CA with the designers. As evidenced by the unscripted and live video, this design group appears highly committed and passionate about creating a perfect product in all respects. Next, Patagonia sources the organic cotton fiber in Turkey.

Apparently, 10 years ago few places in the world grew organic cotton. Turkey was then and is today one of the main producers of organic cotton for Europe and Asia. Next, the fiber moves on to Bangkok Thailand, where the fibers are turned into yarn at Thai Alliance Textile. This company pioneered with Patagonia ten years ago in learning how to process organic cotton, and they are still in business today as one of Patagonia’s lead suppliers. Unfortunately, not much more of their business (clientele) has gone organic. But hopefully that will change soon!

After the yarn is spun, the yarn moves on to another company in Thailand, Siam Knitwear, at which point the yarn is spun into custom ordered fabric and then sewn into the items choice. All orders are custom orders and again, Patagonia has been a loyal customer of this company for what sounded like to be at least a decade. Both of these Thailand factories appear to be on the high end of production in Asia, paying their workers a very reasonable wage, with health care on site in some cases as well as other benefits. Check out the Siam Knitwear Video:

Finally, after the shirts are sewn, they are transported to Reno Nevada, where they are sorted for distribution. http://www.patagonia.com/web/us/footprint/index.jsp

One last interesting feature on this ‘Chronicles’ piece is that Patagonia tells you exactly how much CO2 emissions are released as a result of the entire production and dissolution process. In the case of the organic cotton Tee is nearly 27lbs (or 12kg).

clipped from www.patagonia.com Environmentalism: Leading the Examined Life™ The Footprint Chronicles is an interactive mini-site that allows you to track the impact of five specific Patagonia products from design through delivery. Caveat: These examinations are partial and preliminary. Each season we’ll examine a few new products. As we learn more, the picture will gain more focus through the haze. And the more we see, and then give some thought, the more bad practices we’ll be able to change with all the speed we can muster.

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Photo source: Flickr (spiffxp)

The advantage of many renewable fibers such as bamboo is that they can be grown without petroleum based toxic pesticides, herbicides and defoliates such as those that are typically used in cotton growing.

Despite the nearly impeccable growing characteristics of bamboo, there are some concerns associated with its processing (as noted in my recent post Bamboo Processing Considerations I). Since that post, I have come across evidence suggesting that there are companies currently processing bamboo in a low impact manner.

At Green Festivals in DC, I visited Jonano, one of the best eco-fashion apparel stores in my view, and spoke with Bonnie Seifers (owner and designer of the company). According to Bonnie, it is possible to process bamboo without harsh chemicals and damaging environmental impacts. Her process (obviously proprietary) does not use bleaching and is apparently organic. Jonano carries a range of organic clothes for men, women and children with a fashionable, yet comfortable look. Many of her fabrics derived from bamboo and processed into her own proprietary blend called ecoKashmere.

Further to the green bamboo processing argument, last weekend I had the opportunity to visit Envi, a relatively new eco-friendly clothing store on Newbury Street in Boston, MA. Envi carries a broad range of green apparel labels from Stuart + Brown, to Panda Snack, Twice Shy and Toggle as well as Edun.

While small, the store carries a variety of styles including some of the softest, most appealing bamboo shirts and skirts I have seen. In chatting with the salesperson, I learned that at least some of the companies producing bamboo clothing are borrowing from the practices of Tencel production and reusing the solvents throughout the pulverizing and combing process, such that environmental damage is minimized. So it may be the case that the bamboo clothes (at least those in Envi Be Green and by Jonano) are more green than originally thought.

While it is very difficult to get a solid handle on exact bamboo processing steps and components, Tencel production appears to be one of closest comparison. Tencel is similar to bamboo in a number of respects.

Tencel is the brand name for a fiber generically called lyocell, and lyocell is a man-made fiber from natural wood pulp. It has proven popular in clothing primarily because it is absorbant , soft and comfortable. It is particularly appealing in high humidity climates. Lyocell (or tencel) is stronger that cotton and rayon and does not lose strength when wet. It is frequently blended with cotton or polyester, typically in oven fabrics. It is manufactured using a solvent spinning process, but the solvent is reused so that there is little environmental exposure.

Patagonia, a remarkably innovative outdoor clothing company with one of the most pioneering green track records of the last two decades has been using tencel for quite some time. According to Kill Vlahos, environmental analysis director for Patagonia, “Tencel production is a closed loop system. All solvents remaining after processing are reused; none gone into the waste steam. Most processors won’t talk about bamboo processing. They say it’s a proprietary process. We need disclosure, and the information we get has to reveal true environmental advantages for us to consider the fiber.” Source: ‘All Natural” in www.geartrends.com Winter 2005

So if this is also the case for Bamboo, then we are looking at a much more eco-friendly product. However I dare say that not all companies are embracing the closed loop production process (without multi-stage bleaching). At Green Festivals, I asked as many vendors as possible who were selling bamboo fabrics/products, and only one of them, Jonano confirmed organic, eco-friendly processing. Others, such as Pure Fiber, mentioned that they do not have full information on the processing, since it is proprietary and done before they get the fabric (in places such as Pakistan).

Hopefully someday we will have a better certification process available that will also include the processing of these fibers. Until that time however, it is important to ask questions on the sourcing of materials and make sure that the processing meets your own standards of green-ness.

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Source: Flickr (Ewe Give Me Knits!)

If you are a chocolate lover keen on organic blends, the DC Green festivals was the place to be last weekend. While I thought I was a relatively savvy organic chocolate consumer, the Festival proved me wrong with a handful of new brands in the category:

• Alter Ego (http://www.altereco-usa.com/main.php) offers coffee, tea, chocolate, rice, quinoa, sugar, hearts of palm). This company is very cool – with an all around eco-friendly and ethically conscious approach. While I had not seen or sampled their product before the festivals I can honestly say they have a very a very solid range of basic products: from rice, to sugar and coffee and tea, all available at a fair price, organically produced and fair trade certified. They had 4 varietals of chocolate on demo, each of which were produced in different corners of the world: Ghana, Bolivia, and elsewhere in Latin America. I believe they are available in Whole Foods as well, so check them out! (On a side note: Apparently, it is easiest to produce fair trade chocolate in Latin America since the facilities are all set up, and there are several cooperatives with experience in this area, and greater enforcements for quality control, but if anyone knows of other companies that are producing fair trade organic chocolate in Africa, please do share).

• Kallari Rainfamily (Roberto’s Recipe) Amazing new company*. From their business model to their exquisite cocoa complex notes, this company is incredible. Relatively new, yet not sold in Whole Foods or Trader Joes, or any other big retailer for that matter, Kallari Rainfamily is a family-owned cooperative located in the rainforest of Ecuador. The company not only supports the growing the cacao bean, but also transforms it into some of the most delectable chocolate I have ever tasted. If I am not mistaken, I believe the vendor mentioned they have already received requests from Swiss chocolate manufactures to receive some of their chocolate.

• Travel Chocolate. This is an innovative chocolate company, born out of an avid traveler-chocolate lover who has merged the two passions into one interesting product. With different travel destinations on each chocolate bar, the brand is well suited for airports, travel destinations and really anywhere - that transports the interested consumer into a virtual ‘chocolate destination’ with peace of mind that all ingredients are organically derived and ethically produced. Check it out!

As for older, more established companies, Dagoba http://www.dagobachocolate.com/) stood out as well with their panoply of flavors, recipes and aromas. Like many other chocolatiers at the festival, Dagoba is clearly dedicated to the art and science of cacao alchemy: transforming cacao beans into exquisite chocolate types and flavors. Dagoba embraces a philosophy and methodology known as Full Circle Sustainability™: blending equity, quality, ecology and community.

My favorite for the day however was Kallari’s vintage 75% cacao with fruity notes and floral aroma, much like a complex, aged wine. I highly recommend sampling this bar if you have the opportunity. I am not sure where they are sold yet in the US, but will post as soon as I discover!

The eco-fashion front at the Festival was equally as exciting and thriving as the chocolate. Stay tuned for my next post which will review some of the hottest and most interesting vendors in my view as well as point out some areas for improvement, and what’s new on the fabric scene. Stay tuned!

*I believe that this company is actually a non-profit. Stay on the look-out for this brand. While not inexpensive, it is truly delicious, and also makes you feel good that you are helping the local Ecuadorian economy and supporting organic agriculture.

Photo: From Flickr by MonkeyBites

UK company Finisterre, who got their roots in high technical surf gear is now breaking new ground with their tremendously innovative waterproofing gear. As a deviation from the Buffalo clothing concept from Patagonia, this new technology uses a combination of fibers piles in a hydro carbon coupled with a high density fiber that mimics body dynamics (to allow for breathability) - much like animal fur. As you sweat, moisture droplets are collected in the face of the fabric. The fabric is designed in such as way that the more you sweat, and the harder you work, the farther away the moisture droplets get from your body. The current system is designed by Nikwax Analogy.

This company is definitely worth checking out.

clipped from www.treehugger.com The news is that they aren’t manufacturing in China any more, have introduced beeswax impregnated poly-cotton fabrics, garments of traceable merino wool, and embraced recycled polyester fabrics, whilst simultaneously dropping laminated waterproofs in favour of what they see as a biomimetric alternative. No, not the much vaunted lotus leaf fabric, instead they take their cue from animal fur. After the fold we chew the fat in an extended interview with the guys from Finisterre as they explain in detail just how this all works. Buffalo uses a fiber pile worn next to the body - a combination of capillary action and thermodynamics keep the wearer warm and relatively dry when working hard. Biomimetic waterproofs use a fiber pile worn away from the body and then waterproofed [we think they mean water resistant] in a hydrocarbon d.w.r [durable water repellent]. The result is very similar to animal fur and its performance revolves around two points.

From Finisterre

Biomimicry

Moving closer to our ambitions is a gradual process and in order that we maintain our focus, every single one of our garments is designed under a number of initiatives. Throughout the product descriptions over the next few pages, you’ll see where each initiative, via its motif, has been applied to which product.

Biomimicry - The imitation of systems present in the natural environment and the application of their design to man-made products.

Natural Advantage - Solutions built by nature.

Reclaim, Reprocess, Reuse - A multi option recycling programme relating to what happens to the garments after their life.

Eco-circle - The world’s first closed loop polyester recycling scheme.

Horizons - From manufacturing ethics to sustainable development, this focuses on building transparency in our practises and those we work with. In the current range, this is divided between the Storm Track and Humboldt, both made as part of a rehabilitation scheme run by nuns in Colombia. The remainder of the products are made in the EU (Portugal) in a facility that has the top ISO accreditations. As well as this, we also aim to keep everything we do here as local as possible.

ZQUE - Worlds first traceable chain that combines Merino with an accreditation programme that ensures environmental, social and economic sustainability, animal welfare and traceability.