Most people base their clothing decisions on style. If you are trying to make the best choice for the environment, it gets more complicated. You have to choose between animal (wool, leather, fur, etc. ) vegetable (cotton, linen, etc.) or mineral (polyester, PET, PVC etc).
You might also concern yourself with the working conditions of the people who make the textiles and the garments. There is also the option of organic materials. Wool or cotton that is not organic can have pesticide residues.
One popular choice among outdoorsy people is Polar Fleece, which is made from plastic. Everything that is wrong with plastic in general is also wrong with Polar Fleece. That being said, it’s pretty cozy feeling and quite durable. There is some concern being raised about the chemical antimony leaching out of Polar Fleece.
Polar Fleece is a bit of a recycling success story. The company started using PET from recycled water bottles in 1993 and they have continued improving the process and growing the market for outerwear made from recycled plastic.
This repurposing of polyethylene tephthalate puts it on our backs and out of the environment for a few years, but clothing will generally be thrown away at the end of its lifespan. Some garment companies are now recycling old fleece, be sure to check that out before you send any of yours to the landfill. Remember that recycle is the last of the three Rs. Giving your used coat to charity (assuming it is still in reasonably good condition) is better than taking it to Patagonia to be recycled.
When it comes to clothing, I am a big proponent of the first R, reduce. I do have the luxury of working at home rather than in any kind of work environment with a dress code.
I still prefer wool and cotton. I wore those red plaid lumberjack shirts before anyone had ever heard of grunge and I recently bought a nearly new one on the street for about 0.50 USD.
I spent a couple decades of my life working in some physically demanding trades and I was hard on clothes. Reading the labels on my work clothing is probably what first brought home the concept of globalization. Even in the 80s, my Canadian style jack shirts were made in China. I think my new one is made in China, but it is not labeled as such. The label is kind of interesting.
The materials label says cotton in three different languages, none of which are English (katoen/baumwolle/coton).
The textile and garment industries are very globalized and complicated. A lot of ethical and environmental aspects have to be considered if you want to be a conscious consumer. I am still trying to get my head around the ethics of buying used clothing here.
There are clothing companies that specifically set out to provide guilt free clothing. Holy Cow in Minnesota is one such company and they have an interesting relationship with Wholefoods.
March 12th, 2009 at 1:49 am
You make some great points about the choices we make for our clothing. Last factor on the list in my opinion should be price. Unfortunately, the Walmarts etc. make that the #1 priority for many consumers. When will they learn that by the time they go through their third POS shirt from the big box they could still be wearing a good quality garment and have actually saved money?
A question: are the fibers from the polar fleece garments truly recyclable? A few months ago, I blogged on how great I thought it was that Trex recycles plastic bags into deck lumber. I found out later that their process was actually “de-cycling” because once the boards were past their useful lives as decking material there is now way to reprocess them into anything else.
April 4th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Almost every piece of clothing I own comes from a thrift shop. This week I got a beautiful blue hooded sweatshirt for under $2; seems brand new. I also knit so all my socks are hand-knit and a couple of sweaters. One point: non-organic cotton uses an enormous percentage of the world’s pesticides. Organic bamboo, cotton and hemp are now fairly widely available.
April 4th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Johnny, the folks who make polar fleece can recycle ‘fleece to fleece’, but there is a limit to how many times that can be done. It seems there is an inevitable ‘end cycle’ with all plastic recycling.
Jane, good point about the pesticides in conventional cotton. I think a growing demand for organic cotton would have a very positive impact on the environment. It would also be great to have the material grown and processed on the continent that is demanding the end products in order to reduce transport. Cotton production and processing has followed cheap labor. It could be grown in many different parts of the world.