Green Cotton

Most natural textiles – cotton, wool, linen, tencel, bamboo – are naturally cream or pale brown. Almost universally these fabrics are bleached before dyeing.

Natural shades of textiles vary, and starting the dye process with a white fabric enables the factory to anticipate the final color more precisely.

So honestly, how safe and environmentally friendly is it to bleach fabrics?

You know that bottle of bleach in your laundry room? The one with the safety cap, the warnings not to drink it or let children handle it or inhale the fumes or mix it with anything lest it go bang? That’s the exact same product that textiles are bleached with. And, often discharged into rivers.

The most widely used industrial bleaches are chlorine compounds, usually sodium hypochlorite – household bleach – or chlorine dioxide. Both are hazardous to factory workers, who are at risk of burns, lung and eye injuries.

So how do industrial bleaches affect the environment?

Sodium hypochlorite oxidizes organic matter in rivers and oceans to produce chemicals called trihalomethanes,  some of which are carcinogenic.

Chlorine dioxide also produces trihalomethanes in waterways. It also can form dioxins – carcinogens, mutagens, and tetrogenic compounds – which the body stores in fatty tissues almost indefinitely.

Bleaching also consumes large amounts of natural resources; primarily vast quantities of water used to rinse the fabric after bleaching, otherwise any residual bleach would weaken the fibers.

What are the alternatives to bleach ?

Unbleached fabrics clearly have an environmental advantage. Here’s a skater t-shirt for dudes,  and if I was four, I’d have a tantrum for this gorgeous little dress.

For other colors – and particularly for white and pale colors, such as achieving perfectly white jeans, or a pure white wedding dress, require the use of bleach.

Less environmentally damaging solutions to bleaching are the use of either hydrogen peroxide or ozone bleach. Both are chlorine-free, fairly benign chemical processes which produce no dioxins or trihalomethanes, and use less energy and water than chlorine-based bleach.

According to an ozone bleach promotional website, chlorine bleaching requires 8.28MJ of energy, and emits 800g of CO₂ to whiten 1kg of cotton yarn.

To bleach the same amount of cotton with ozone bleach would require 60% less energy and produce half the CO₂ emissions.

Ozone breaks down into pure oxygen as it bleaches, with no other by-products. But it’s hard to use, and factories must invest in new bleaching machinery to use ozone. Some factories are beginning to use ozone bleach in conjunction with chlorine bleach to reduce the quantity of chlorine bleach used – a step in the right direction.

Hydrogen peroxide has a similarly low environmental impact, as it breaks down into water and oxygen as it bleaches. It’s also easier to use, and products bleached with hydrogen peroxide are on our shelves (or our virtual shelves). Loop’s organic cotton towels and bedding are bleached with hydrogen peroxide, and ROMP’s organic white cotton shirts printed with French song lyrics are too.

Could Chlorine Bleaching Be Eliminated From the Textile Industry?

Chlorine bleaching currently dominates the textile industry but existing alternative technologies exist that can be used reasonably easily and cheaply, and have much lower environmental impact. Bleach pollution is a major problem, but it is one with a solution, and it’s possible that one day it will be history.

And for brides to be: yes! you can buy a wedding dress with without bleach. Olivia Luca’s wedding dresses made from unbleached fair trade handwoven silk shantung are elegant and eco-friendly.

Photo source above: Flickr

Photosource: flickr.com

By Brit and Shana

Organic cotton, hemp and recycled PET, are fabulous alternatives to water and pesticide heavy conventional cotton; however, clothing ‘use’ actually has a higher environmental load than ‘production’, so learning how to green your laundering is an important step. According to Treehugger, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies show that even in a short 2 year life span, over 75% of the energy consumption for apparel, comes from their laundering. People are now researching ways to improve fabrics to resist dirt and mitigate cleaning needs; however until self-cleaning clothes are invented, there are easy and important ways to reduce the environmental impact of laundering.

If you make doing your laundry more ecological, you’ll not only save money and ensure your clothes last longer, but you can do wonders to your skin. Here are 10 easy tips to make your laundering greener without buying a thing.

(1) Ordinary Loads. Some people do laundry as if their clothes were caked in mud or had been into a coal mine even after one wear, e.g hot washes, powerful detergents, and high-temperature drying. Yet, the fact of the matter is, extreme washing is not necessary for ordinary loads (90% of cleaning needs). In fact, we can reduce the overall need for doing loads to begin with by wearing clothes more than once.

(2) Removing Stains. For most everyday clothes, one simple step is to pre-treat any stains, then do a cold wash. This will get clothes nice and clean with almost any kind of dirt or stain. Speaking of pre-treating stains, Ed Begley came up last week in our post on Green Celebs and he has a line of eco-friendly cleaning products one of which is a laundry stain remover (supposedly one of his best products).

Forget harsh bleach or chemical stain removers, many stains can be removed more effectively with vinegar, baking soda, milk and sunshine. It’s a matter of tailoring your approach to the stain, rather than zapping it with a one-size-fits-all commercial stain remover.

The sun has a natural bleaching effect too, so hanging bedlinens and other whites outside to dry will help them to stay white.

(3) Heavy Dirt. In addition, you can set aside truly dirty clothes and wash those separately at a higher temperature when enough have accumulated to make a load. Always rinse on cold, not warm.

(4) Washing Machines. When in the market for a new machine, look out for energy star rated machines, which use around half the water that an older machine uses. Europeans have been using front loading machines for an eternity, but they are still a novelty in the US. Front loaders cost more to buy – Frigidaire make the cheapest on the market at the moment – but they cost less to run, using less water and less electricity than top loading machines. They also spin clothes much dryer, cutting drying costs. And they save bra straps from the Spinning Spindle of Doom, an object peculiar to top-loading machines.

(5) Laundry Detergent. In the 1950s, detergent manufacturers were embroiled in bitter competition as to who could make the soapiest, bubbliest detergent. All those bubbles that washed down the drain ended up in lakes and rivers, and at Niagara Falls columns of soap suds rose half way back up the falls.

Today’s detergents are kinder to the waterways but they still end up there – along with ingredients like bleach, pthaletes, and the commonly-used surfactant nonylphenol ethoxylate, an endocrine disruptor and estrogen mimic which does weird things to fish.

Perhaps it’s echos from fifties advertising, but detergent is one of those products that I had doubts that it would work in ecological form. Grist.com’s Sarah Van Schagen tested several eco-friendly detergents and rated Seventh Generation the best, with a very respectable performance in cleaning, and stain removal.

It’s not possible for your washing machine to rinse every last bit of detergent out of your clothes – some of it will always stay in the fibers. It’s kinder to your skin, as well as the local fish, to use a eco-friendly detergent.

(6) Tumble Dryers. are a heinous waste of energy, and shorten the life of your clothes to boot. Think about what that stuff in the lint screen is. It’s your clothes. Dryers are especially harsh on natural fabrics like cotton so if you have to dry, use a low heat, or fluff with air. So the bottom line is don’t tumble dry unless you have to. Place clothes on a drying rack, a line, or use solar energy. For more info see treehugger.com

(7) Line Drying. Even better, line dry on fine days, or on an airer, or on your radiators in winter. Drying clothes in your home raises the humidity of the air (obviously not a plus in Florida in the summer) but where there’s dry heat in the summer, and parched central-heated air in the winter, extra humidity can make the difference between cracking, dry skin, and softer, calmer skin.

Line Dryer, Photosource: Treehugger.com

Hanging garments to dry on clothes hangers simplifies laundry slightly, meaning they can be put straight into the wardrobe when dry.

(8 ) Dry Cleaning is not a very green cleaning process. In fact, ‘dry’ cleaning is not really dry at all. Though it means without water, the process actually involves a number of often toxic chemicals (solvents) thrown into a giant industrial washing machine with the clothes. The water in this case is being replaced by the chemical solvents.

The most common solvent used is perchloroethylene, classed as a “potential carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Less toxic dry cleaning solvents, including liquid CO2, are being developed, but are not widely available. In most cases, dry cleaning entails a whole host of non-environmentally friendly chemicals, many of which can easily leach into your skin after the dry cleaning process. Nowadays, there are some ‘ecofriendly alternatives’ to dry cleaning. However the jury is still out in terms of how clean and green these really are…best to avoid the process altogether. Its worth checking these out in your area though.

Perhaps most important is to read labels carefully and if they read ‘dry clean only’ seriously consider whether it is a must-have. In addition however, many dry-clean only clothes, like silk, wool, and rayon, are happy to be gently hand washed, using a gentle soap (eg a mild detergent with a pH below 7 for wool, such as Infinity Heavenly Horsetail or a mild liquid castile soap such as Dr. Bronner’s baby soap for cleaning silk). For more information on hand washing silk and wool see Care2.com. Never wring or twist, press excess water out with a towel, and lay flat to dry.

(9) Minimizing washing. Going back full circle to our point #1, wear clothes more than once. Pants, trousers, skirts, blouses – this should be easy to implement. Remove stains quickly and then you don’t have to wash the whole garment.

(10) Mindful purchases. Finally, being mindful of clothing purchases makes an important difference to the planet, and the health of farmers and garment workers across the world. Buy less, buy green, and recycle & reuse what you have.

Every garment is manufactured once, but will be washed many times. Up to 75% of the environmental impact generated by garments occurs in the first 2 years of wear and maintenance , not in their production, so be mindful of how you care for your clothes.

If you are getting rid of an old washing machine or want to make creative use of old style washing boards, baskets and machines…check out these catchy laundry garden pots! Tell us what you have done to green your laundry. Are we missing anything? Let us know….

Garden washboard, photosource: flickr.com