Green Cotton

Food, fashion and fun were all on the agenda at last week’s Boston GreenFest, held from August 19-21. Featuring eco-minded exhibitors from all over New England, the family-friendly event took over Boston’s City Hall Plaza. Organic food vendors, green design companies, and plenty of local businesses were on hand to both showcase their wares and generate eco-awareness.

The event kicked off on Thursday morning with a green business breakfast and green jobs forum (featuring former Governor Michael Dukakis). Other highlights included 50/50 raffle (wherein the winner received half the winnings while the other half went to the Foundation for a Green Future, Inc.) and continuous performances held on the City Hall Plaza’s main stage. The concerts, dance performances, stunt work, fashion shows, yoga and workout bootcamp dominated the stage all weekend long. Thursday also featured the One Gallon Challenge, a “race” to see how far the latest fuel-efficient, eco-friendly cars could travel with one gallon of gas… from 110 miles away in Northampton, MA.

Friday’s highlights included the Eco-Runway, featuring Nancy’s Gone Green! Eco Boutique of Framingham, MA. Festival goers could also enjoy another night of performances and shop in the Eco Bazaar. They could also sample organic “world cuisine” in the Eco Cafe, including North Indian dishes from Mela Restaurant, Korean cuisine from Choi Food, Mexican treats from Cha-Cha-Cha, and coffee from Dean’s Bean, a fair-trade, organic company and a Green Cotton favorite! Saturday saw still more exhibitors, concerts and another staging of the Eco-Runway.

New Englanders are fortunate to be able to enjoy large green festivals like this, and the Boston GreenFest is sandwiched between two other major eco-conscious events: April’s Down2Earth and October’s Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. Plenty of healthy, organic food, along with fashion designers and green companies, will descend on VegFest next month, so if you missed GreenFest, be sure to check it out!

Green Cotton was happy to receive a gift from a local eco-friendly vendor that will be reviewed (and raved over!) here on this blog… stay tuned later this week to find out what it is!

Images from: http://www.bostongreenfest.org/index1.html

http://www.bostongreenfest.org/onegalchal.html

http://www.bostongreenfest.org/fashiontent.html

Welcome!

Green Cotton is returning after a summer-long hiatus. We have missed reporting on the eco-apparel industry and sharing our ideas and insights with you. We hope you will welcome us back to the blogging world and check back regularly for all-new content. As always, we will be reporting on the latest initiatives when it comes to all things green, taking a particular interest in eco-friendly, organic and sustainable fabrics and products. Over the next few weeks, we will also take a look back at some of our past posts (we’ve covered everything from cotton, tencel, bamboo, hemp, soy and jute to Fashion Week runway reports) as we look ahead to the exciting future of eco-fashion.

As you well may know, the world of eco-fashion has come a long way since Green Cotton started up three years ago. Now, eco-items are becoming much more commonplace. The phrase “green fashion” is no longer used as an oxymoron. Big box stores carry “organic” clothing lines (or so they say; we’ve expressed our doubts over this occurrence before, on account of the actual cost of authentic, certified organic fabrics– see our examination of Loomstate for Target). More and more independent designers are opting to use organic or recycled fabrics (Kelly Lane, whose on-trend pieces sell at Jute & Jackfruit, is one favorite example). Mainstream fashion magazines are featuring more “eco” items (see People Style Watch’s monthly “Easy Eco” column). And you no longer have to search far and wide for the perfect pair of eco-friendly and/or organic, recycled, vegan and, yes, trendy pair of shoes– one glimpse of eco-chic brands Mohop and NeuAura, and you will never again think that “green” footwear equals “crunchy,” “hippie” or “Woodstock” (unless, you know, that’s what you’re going for).

Here at Green Cotton, we’re thrilled to note all of the major advances in this growing industry and any positive changes taking place in mainstream fashion. As we transition from summer to fall, expect to see some major fashion coverage (especially with Fashion Week coming up!). As we’ve done in the past, we will be reporting on emerging trends with an “eco eye,” presenting you with earth-conscious alternatives to what you see on the runway and on clothing racks. We love to showcase green products and companies that are doing wonderful work, giving back to the planet and its people.

That said, Green Cotton plans to attend this weekend’s GreenFest in Boston. We hope to see you there!

Check back soon for new articles. We’ll be “greening” over some big fall trends and also highlighting a different fabric each week, discussing what makes it eco (or not). You can also keep up with the goings on at Jute & Jackfruit at the JJF Blog and follow us on Twitter!

Thanks for stopping by!

Image from http://www.organic-cotton.us/organic-cotton1.jpg

The Swedish clothing retailer H&M is usually raved over and blogged about for its bargain-priced, runway-inspired pieces. But recently the company came under fire for reportedly slashing unworn clothing to pieces – using a machine to cut holes in items and render them un-wearable – and tossing the clothes out with the trash.

The dumping was discovered at New York’s 34th street H&M by City University of New York graduate student Cynthia Magnus. When Magnus contacted H&M’s headquarters in Sweden, she received no response. She even offered to connect H&M with a local charity so that it would be easy of them to dispose of the clothing more effectively, but still no response.

Desperate, Magnus told her story to the New York Times. The Times did some follow-up, then published an article on Tuesday, January 5, 2010. Clearly striking a cord with many a reader, the story happened to be the second most tweeted headline of the day. After waking up to the angry national buzz over the issue, H&M finally paid attention to the issue, and released a statement reported in the Times:

“It will not happen again,” said Nicole Christie, a spokeswoman for H&M in New York. “We are committed 100 percent to make sure this practice is not happening anywhere else, as it is not our standard practice.”

The standard practice is, apparently, to donate unworn clothes and shoes to charity. Christie claimed that she did not know why this particular H&M store was destroying clothes, and that the company is investigating its other stores to make sure this wasteful practice is not happening elsewhere.

The New York Clothing Bank is one such charity that would have gladly accepted H&M’s unwanted garments (or similarly-slashed items from a New York City Wal-Mart that was also discovered demolishing clothes and dumping them on 35th street). Mary Lanning, chairwoman of the Clothing Bank, told the Times, “I would welcome H&M, Wal-Mart and every other enterprise that presently is destroying new clothing to call me immediately.”

Allegedly, H&M is also trying to go green. The Times reports that the Sweden-based company “has an executive in charge of corporate responsibility who leads the company’s sustainability efforts. On its Web site, H&M reports that to save paper, it has shrunk its shipping labels.”

This discovery of H&M’s wastefulness could not have come at a worse time— right after the launch of a new “Garden Collection,” which features clothes made from recycled textiles and PET bottles. It’s a nice attempt, but the humiliation H&M has suffered after this unfortunate incident will make it difficult for their “garden” to flourish.

Apparently, H&M is not alone in their dumping of unused, unsold apparel. Writer, researcher Erika Kawalek, a New York-based journalist, published a very interesting and informative piece on Double X following the news of H&M (http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/why-hm-destroys-unsold-clothes) on why this industry-wide practice is happens. Who would have thought that these unworn clothes often end up as airline seat cushions?  Stay tuned for more on these issues with Erika Kawalek’s forthcoming fashion chronicle, Ragpicker. She’ll offer a rare behind the scenes look at post-market clothing & textiles in the fashion industry.

Photosource top: H&M

By Erin Dale