Green Cotton

Photosource: www.planetaid.org

NOTE: Dear Readers, please click here Planet Aid Revisited: Not a Charity after all: Do Not Donate, to read the updated post on this article. We gathered new information on this charity and therefore want to provide you with the best and most accurate information on this so-called charity, which we learned later has some major issues. Thanks for taking a look!

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Doing some Spring cleaning? In need of a fresh wardrobe, and wondering if there’s a better way to get rid of those old clothes while doing some good? Green Cotton has found the perfect solution for you!

Planet Aid is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 and based in Holliston, MA, dedicated to improving the lives of people in developing countries. They collect goods in over 7,000 clothes collection boxes across the United States in order to raise money for development, protecting the environment, and relief aid to Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Because only 15% of textiles thrown away in the US annually are recycled, this is certainly an area that could be improved, and would in turn decrease landfill waste.

By reusing clothing that would otherwise be thrown away, Planet Aid is protecting the environment in a larger way. Planet Aid also actively works to restore and preserve the Earth’s atmosphere, soil, plants and animals by initiating preservation projects in rivers, seas and the forest.

Planet Aid program in Zambia

Planet Aid also uses money raised by clothing to serve victims of hunger, war, natural disasters, atomic accidents, plagues and other catastrophes, to assist the relocation of peoples, and to rebuild areas hit by these types of disasters and accidents. They have also established educational facilities for training personnel and volunteers.

Planet Aid estimated that in 2005 alone, their work sustained 16,000 jobs worldwide. They were also responsible for the reuse of cotton clothing that saved 60 billion gallons of water and more than 45,000 pounds of pesticides! Planet Aid saved taxpayers in Massachusetts alone approximately $1.8 million of landfill disposal fees.

There are tons of yellow bins throughout Massachusetts, New England, Ohio and other parts of the country including the Los Angeles area, so check out their bin locator to find the nearest drop box to you.  We highly recommend it!

Photosource: www.invisiblechildren.com

“Starting a fashion mutiny by giving high style a soul.™”
Invisible Children (IC) was the organization that made a name for itself with the horrific video documentary that exposed Joseph Kony’s scheme to kidnap children and force them to fight in his rebel army in the Eastern Congo beginning in 2003.

Today Invisible Children is a broader franchise, and while their mission has remained exactly the same, their means of achieving the same end are now multifaceted. IC representatives spend time traveling to raise awareness about this issue, continue to create documentaries, and have started sewing cooperatives to help former female child soldiers emancipate themselves economically.

One of their main sewing cooperatives is called “MEND”. The goal of “MEND” is to “Seam a personal connection between products and their makers, while repairing the lives of women in distressed regions of the world.”

Photosource: www.invisiblechildren.com

Each garment is signed by the women artisan who crafted it, so that purchasers can go to the website and read her personal story documented in video bios, photos, and testimonies. All of these different means of documentation are meant to explain how each individual woman is “on the MEND” economically and emotionally due to both her participation in the MEND program as well as the purchases made.
Female child soldiers in Joseph Konys rebel’s army are often also used as sex slaves. When they finally escape to return to Ugandan society, they are ostracized because of their affiliation with the rebels. They are given sewing lessons as “brief rehabilitation” but skills learned through this program are generally not in high demand.

Additionally by offering women lessons about health, literacy, numeracy, savings and investment, MEND gives women life skills necessary to be self-sufficient. In addition, MEND teaches women tailoring skills that are above average, giving them versatility to make men’s, women’s and unisex products.

IC has a Savings and Investment Training Institute (SITI) which gives MEND seamstresses the skills they need to run their own small business and open a savings account, through which they can then receive medical care and pay for school related fees for their children.

Lastly, MEND helps women ‘mend’ emotionally from the inside by pairing each seamstress with an IC mentor, with whom they meet monthly and work through unresolved psychological traumas and provide basic HIV and AIDS awareness training.

By offering all these methods of recovery, MEND program is extremely comprehensive, thinking of all needs these women may have economically but also emotionally, and tries to provide means for them to “MEND” completely.
For this reason, the MEND program is quite amazing, and worth anyone’s support. While their products are not available on the Invisible Children website just yet, they are expected to be up by late 2009. To see others way to support Invisible Children like these women seamstresses, go to the Invisible Children website.

By Julia Rea

Photosource: Jill Fehrenbacher. www.inhabitat.com

Green Cotton is excited to announce one of the greatest “hot ticket” Eco-Fashion events this Earth Day: The 3^rd annual Runway Show and Student Competition which will take place at “Project Earth Day” in New York City on Thursday in Lower Manhattan April 23rd, at 6 pm. Project Earth Day was created originally to celebrate NYC-based leadership in the fashion, interiors, and green building industries, and is featuring some of the most talented budding Eco-Fashion Designers as well as the most innovative brands making sustainable design in the fashion world today.

Bahar Shahpar is playing the role of stylist and co-producer for this event in partnership with the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and the New York Restoration Project (NYRP), guaranteeing the event will be a success and on the frontier of Eco-Chic Fashion.

The theme this year is ‘Through the Looking Glass: An Exploration of Scale and Proportion,’ explained by the organizers as a metaphoric play on dimension: “Our Wonderland is present-day New York City, viewed through a distorted lens – where big is small, small is big, and the worlds of building and fashion collide through an exploration of scale.”

The student competition gives new designers an opportunity to get great media coverage, be voted on by a distinguished panel of guest judges, and generate buzz about their new label or collection. Another function of Project earth Day, therefore, is to help those in the established Eco-Fashion world identify new talent. Last year’s winners assure us that picking this year’s winners’ will be challenging. Previous winners include Amira Marion, Maritza Romo de Fusco, Judy Lee, Ashley Newsome, and Daphne Woo.

2008 Grand Prize Winner: Amira Marion. Photosource: www.inhabitat.com

2008 Second Place Winner: Maritza Romo de Fusco. Photosource: www.inhabitat.com

Project Earth Day’s broad group of contributing sponsors reflects the growing understanding of how important sustainability, as well as fashion, are in our modern world. This event has the potential to have a broad effect on the Eco-Fashion world, and imbue an urban Eco-Chic feel to the most modern of trends. A limited number of tickets are still available, so if you could somehow make it to this event on Thursday, you would probably be doing yourself a favor!

Stay tuned for Green Cotton’s recap of this event at a later date!

By: Julia Rea