Sustainable Fabrics: Wearing SOY… ♥ ♥ ♥

This could possibly be my new FAVOURITE plant. SOYBEANS! Being vegan, I can’t live without soy products, and what do I find out when researching Soy Bean fabric?

♥ It is made from the leftovers of tofu and soy milk products. ♥

Soybean fabric is akin to recycled paper, if you think about it in those terms, since it uses the waste products from the above mentioned foodstuffs. So, basically, soybean is THE BEST. Not only is  it nutritious to eat, it makes for one of the most environmentally friendly fabrics, even in the production stages.

“Soybean fibre is a kind of reproducible plant protein fibre, which uses the residual cake after oil is extracted from the soybean, abstracts high polymer from soybean cake and prepares a protein spinning solution of a certain concentration. After obtaining the spinning solution, a filament bundle of a single fibre 0.9-3.0 dtex is spun with the use of the wet-method spinning process. Next, the fibre performance is stabilised through hydroformylation, and then it undergoes winding, heat setting and cutting. In this way, soybean fibre of various lengths and specifications for spinning can be manufactured.

 Because the auxiliary and additional agents and materials used in production of soybean fibre are not poisonous, the semi-finished fibres can be recovered of most additional agents and used again, and the residue remained after purification of protein can be used as foodstuff. Therefore, its production course will not cause pollution to the environment, and complies completely with environmental protection requirements.”
– Fibre & Textiles in Eastern Europe

Apart from being environmentally amazing, the fabric provides many benefits for the wearer as well:
– It produces a super soft, silky and light fabric that feels like cashmere but is smoother.
– It has the appearance and lustre of silk, giving people a sense of elegance.
– It has anti-bacterial and UV radiation prevention properties.

UGH. In short, Soybean is PERFECT. ♥

Sustainable Fabrics: BAMBOO BABY~

When it comes to environmentally friendly fabrics and clothing, garments made from bamboo are, by far, one of the best in the industry these days when it comes to sustainability.

Bamboo is a type of viscose and is created from the leaves and the soft inner pith of the bamboo trunk. They are extracted using a steaming process and eventually crushed mechanically. The bamboo is then chemically treated to turn it into cellulose and forced through spinnerets to obtain fibre threads, which are then spun into yarns.

Bamboo is a naturally organic fibre, requiring no pesticide in it’s growth, as well as growing extremely quickly, up to one meter per day, and being able to grow densely on a small amount of land. Another environmentally friendly property of bamboo is it’s ability to absorb 35% more carbon dioxide than the average tree.

Some properties of fabric made from bamboo include high absorbancy, higher than that of cotton, breathability, making it comfortable against the skin, and thermo-regulating, keeping the person wearing it warm in cooler climates. It is also a versatile fabric, being able to be as soft as cashmere and durable enough to produce bamboo denim.

In short, here is a list of BAMBOO awesomeness:
– Able to be grown quickly and in small areas.
– No pesticides are needed.
– Produces more oxygen than conventional cotton, meaning is gets rid of more greenhouse gases.
– It is a breathable fabric, keeping one cool in summer and warm in winter.
– It is an anti-bacterial fabric as well as deoderising, keeping one allergy and odour-free.

And while studies have shown that the processing of bamboo into fabric uses a LOT of chemicals and energy intensive processes, and even some labour concerns, being primarily produced in China, it is still a lot greener than conventional clothing.

Some information taken from this LA Times article.

Is the Vegan Way truly sustainable?

Apart from animal rights,  I also believe that the animal industry is strongly linked with sustainability. Virtually ALL economic activity is dependant on the availabilty of energy and materials. The animal industry is NOT sustainable. There are so many different areas that the animal industry pollutes and destroys, from water to air to land, it’s all being covered.

Studies show that vast amounts of water is needed in animal industries compared to that of plants. While this study is from the food point of view, the raising of cows(for beef or leather) and the growing of corn(for consumption or PLA) would be virtually the same.

1 kg of beef requires 50,000 litres of water to produce.
1 kg of corn requires less than 2500 litres of water to produce.

How about that, huh? Some other issues with water would be how these animals we raise would destroy and pollute waterways and cause more deforestation to occur for grazing. The production of leather also pollutes rivers with toxic chemicals such as chromium, mercury and formeldehyde, used to preserve and tan the animal skins.

The animal industry also plays a big part in greenhouse gas emissions. According to studies, over 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Australia can be attributed to the animal industries alone. The Ausrtalian animal industry will produce substantially more warming over the next 20 years than all of Australia’s coal fired power stations put together.

In regards to land, studies from CSIRO and the University of Sydney prove that 92% of all land degradation in Australia is caused by the animal industry and this takes up 50% of the Australian continent. This pie chart shows how much land degradation goes on in the different industries.

In conclusion, I believe that reducing and eventually doing away with the animal industries would bring about a more sustainable environment for us to live in, allowing for more vegetation and sustainable forestry.

Information from this post is taken from a sustainable living flyer, called Eating Up The World, that promotes veganism. All information in the flyer is from academic sources, like the World Wildlife Foundation, the Australian Government, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, CSIRO and UNICEF to name a few.

Why Vegan Clothing?

I feel like I’ve been pretty in-your-face and extremely passionate about my pro-Veganism in my first post, unless I’m just being paranoid..  But if I scared anyone reading it, that’s just how strongly I feel about the subject and I hope it gave you something to think about.

So, let’s get this entry started with:

What is Vegan Clothing?

Vegan clothing  is clothes that do not use any animal product or by-product. Here are some common materials that you will NOT find in a vegan clothing label

1. Silk – Baby silkworms are killed by being dropped into hot boiling water. This is the process of obtaining the silk threads they use to spin their coccoons.
2. Wool – Sheep are exploited and tortured (mulesing) just to provide humans with the wool on their bodies. Shearing of the sheep’s wool can also be a painful and stressful process for the sheep to go through. Watch this video if you feel up for it.
3. Down – Down feathers are plucked painfully from the bodies of geese and ducks.
4. Leather – Most commonly from cows, but there are many different animals that can be part of this category. Without the animal dying and being stripped of their skin, this material would be impossible.
5. Fur – This comes from many different animals as well, like foxes, minks, rabbits and even cats and dogs. Yes, even domestic cats and dogs. I’ve been recently been watching bits and pieces of Skin Trade, a documentry about the fur industry, when I’m at work and I can’t watch 5 seconds of it without wanting to cry my eyes out. Watch the trailer here.

Here is a question for you. If you are ANTI-FUR, why are you not ANTI-LEATHER/SILK/WOOL/ETC as well?

Why a Vegan Label?

Looking at the list above, it’s almost as if, we humans, want to kill and skin as many different species as possible. What is up with that? If you have ever watched and felt sorry for the animals in the factory farming videos, where thousands upon thousands of animals are bred and kept in tiny cages just so they can be slaughtered and/or exploited for human consumption, can you not link that to the animal-derived materials industry? It’s the SAME THING.

These are the reasons I would LOVE to have a vegan label. Animals have been exploited enough by us for hundreds of years. It has even come to the point where most of us don’t even know what goes on behind-the-scenes in the making of these materials. How we get these products that we use in day-to-day, like that ‘lovely‘ leather jacket or that ‘stunning‘ silk blouse. I’ve even met people who never knew about the number of innocent silkworms that died to produce silk.

There materials are also usually a LOT more expensive than the plant or man-made alternative. Why is that so? I guess claiming that something is 100% calf leather can up the value of a garment quite a lot. Is it because the life of the baby cow is worth more? Who made up these rules anyway? This is a quote I got from the Skin Trade trailer I linked above, “If there’s money to be made from animals, people will do just about anything to protect their investment.“

i went and read some magazines…

Headed to the library one day to look up Green Consumerism in fashion and looked through a few magazines. I think they were ViewPoint magazines and some others I cannot remember. I will get the names eventually…

edit: The magazines are View magazines. Danni remembered. 🙂

There were quite a few points I got from the magazine that I truly agree with, namely that Green Consumerism starts with education. We, as designers, have the most potential to initiate change in a consumers mind and push them towards a more sustainable mindset. If we create wasteful products, it is entirely our responsibility. In this respect, education about the Green lifestyle is important in giving us new skills, as well as essential information on the industry and how it works today. Once we are educated in that regard, we can give this information to our customers, giving them the choice to make a change for the better in their lives.

Here are some other points I got from the magazine that I found really interesting:

– The development of eco-polyester, made from renewable corn sucrose, which replaces petrol-based glycol that is normally used.
– The Green mindset is HERE TO STAY, and consumers come from a vast variety of demographics, behaviours and segmentation plans.
– Green consumers are listening, but Green designers are not being heard. Designers need to communicate through the right channels.
– Recessions affect Green, but do not trump it. Less money does not mean less Green.

Reading the magazine made me feel quite positive. It is true that the world’s mindset is slowly changing towards a more sustainable future, with more and more people taking up the Green initiative, and with the consumers AND designers gunning for a Greener future, we can definitely move this world towards a paradise to live in, where we won’t have to worry about climate change and other environmental disasters that might befall us, due to the human races’ crazy methods of consumption..

Next post, I delve deeper into “VEGANISM” and why I believe this is one of the best ways to shift towards a Greener future.

You can tell that this veganism thing is a big thing with me, hey..? ;p

I once wrote an essay….. part 2

Apart from adopting a slow fashion approach, actively wanting to make a difference for a more sustainable world is also an important mindset to have. Emerging practitioners have to start caring for the world that they live in, since this is the world that will be providing them with the resources in their future careers and that to care is a fundamental part of being human. Caring lends a sense of relatabilty to a person and connects one with the world of nature, rather than isolating the narcissistic view that is the modern consumer today  (Ehrenfeld, 2008. 133-134).

Part of caring for the world means caring for the environment, the ecological system that keeps the earth in balance. This means to learn from the way nature sustains itself, to take no more than what is needed, to not harm life, air, water, soil and to help maintain the earth’s capacity for self-repair. Some of the ways these can be done is through using sustainable agriculture, depending more on renewable energy sources and to recycle and reuse old materials (Miller, G. T. 2007. 622).

Using sustainable agriculture and depending on renewable energy sources can mean to only use fabrics created from farms that do not use harmful pesticides for their crops or use unnecessary energy sources. Making sure the fabrics are made from sustainable farms may be more expensive, but the payout in the long run, which is extremely beneficial towards a sustainable future, would be very worth it (Miller, G. T. 2007. 624).

As for recycling used clothing, companies like Xuly.Bët, actively uses second-hand clothing in their designs, reinterpreting each piece of second-hand clothing that the designer can get his hands upon into something covetable and unique in the fashion world. Coming from an African background, designer of Xuly.Bët, Lamine Kouyaté draws inspiration from his reinterpretation of recycled clothing from the way life is in Africa, where second-hand clothing is of an abundance. This also ties recycling in with the culture of the still developing country (Palmer, 2005. 215-227). Taking inspiration from Xuly.Bët, emerging designers can find more innovative ways of sourcing materials for their collections by reusing second-hand clothing in their designs (Fletcher, 2008. 100).

Other ways emerging practitioners can increase sustainability in the world is by reducing or not using animal products in their collections at all. As was cited earlier, the amount of carbon emissions from the livestock industry more than rivals that of the transportation industry (Miller, G. T. 2007. 624). Alternative fabrics can be used in place of these animal products, which the fashion industry lauds as status symbols.

Such views on status is what makes us exploit people who live in poverty, with child labour and unfair trading issues still rampant in poorer developing countries. Emerging practitioners can change this by opting to manufacture locally, which would bring up the local economy as well, or making sure that whoever is employed in the making of these garments are involved in fair trade and are not exploited just for cheap labour costs (M2 Communications Ltd 2009, para 2).

In conclusion, moving towards a sustainable future is definitely not impossible. All it takes is for an emerging practitioner to want to make a step towards it for this to happen. This can happen in as early as the next five years, as long as there are enough people who are willing to give up their narcissitic views and greed to want to make a change in making the world a more ecologically sustainable place for humans to live in.

I once wrote an essay…..

With the state of the Earth’s natural resources in slow but gradual decline, emerging practioners in the fashion industry will have to learn to cope with, and possibly, bring about a change in the shifting consciousness of society in the hopes of keeping the Earth’s natural resources alive so that resources used in said industry will not become completely depleted in the future. Adding to this, emerging practitioners should also help contribute to a better environment and promote sustainability.

Sustainability is the ability to maintain balance in a certain state or system, but sustainability is also the result of the way we live our lives. In the current state of the world, with material goods going through our economy being in excess to what consumers really need, sustainability is far from the consumer’s mind. The modern consumer, driven by greed, only wants quick solutions to reduce unsustainability without addressing the real problem, that is creating sustainability (Ehrenfeld, 2008. 4-7). The human mind believes that we are superior to nature and that it is in this world to serve us, where we see ourselves as outside of nature, not as a part of it (Ehrenfeld, 2008. 24). We also believe in a world of profit, where “it is maximised by exploiting the environment (Colley, 2006. 4)”, without giving fair consideration as to how it is affecting us on a global scale.

With that being said, the fashion industry has always been a source of great consumption and wastage, with examples from the United Kingdom’s (UK) clothing and textile sectors producing “around 3.1 million tonnes of CO2, 2 million tonnes of waste and 70 million tonnes of waste water per year – with 1.5 million tonnes of unwanted clothing ultimately ending up in landfill (M2 Communications Ltd 2009, para 3)”. Especially with the fast-fashion trend of the past few years with brands such as H&M and TopShop using the fast-fashion profit-making scheme to draw in the customers, a lot of clothes and materials are being wasted and taken for granted, which would contribute to unsustainability. These clothes, which once go out of fashion or fall apart, as outlined by the BBC News (2004), are thrown away by the consumer without a second thought, since they are so cheap and only serve the purpose of keeping up with the latest trends in the fashion world.

With the fast-fashion trend contributing to the amount of waste that is produced, a lot of the clothes that have been thrown away are shipped to developing countries to be sold as second hand clothing for the poor, such as clothes from the UK being sold again in countries like Uganda. Even in these developing countries, not all clothes are used and are thrown away, which contributes to the decline of the environment such as a growth in chemical waste output. With man-made fibres, such as polyester and nylon, proven to be non-biodegradable, start to tamper with soil productivity, as well as stop water from running properly, which can lead to stagnant waters. Such waters are ideal breeding grounds for diseases such as malaria, as outlined by the BBC News (2009).

Non-biodegradable waste is not the only contributor to the destruction of the soil and water for the agriculture that the fashion industry so heavily relies upon. Such factors like chemical contamination of soil and water from repeated use of fertilisers and pesticides can contaminate water and soil, causing the resources to lose their natural fertility (Colley, 2006. 20-23).

Another factor that would impact the sustainability of the environment is the livestock industry. As outlined by the Journal of Animal Science, the world’s livestock industry contributes to 18% of the world’s carbon emissions, which is more than that of transportation. This is where the fashion industry gets some of it’s materials that are integral to making certain garments, like leathers, furs and silks, with clothes using such materials lauded as status symbols in the fashion world, once again reiterating the greed and narcissistic views of the human mind.

Not only does the fashion industry have an impact on the sustainability of the world, it also has an impact ethically, with issues such as child labour and unfair trading (M2 Communications Ltd 2009, para 2). With the greed of the modern consumers, there is little thought given to how the garments are made and who makes them. All that matters is that the consumers are able to get the product and profit is ultimately made in the end.

At the rate of consumption that this modern world is going, the world’s renewable and non-renewable resources will slowly be depleted or non-sustainable anymore. There are many ways emerging practitioners in the fashion industry can take a stand to make a change for a more sustainable future. This is all possible if humans can get over their material needs and stop being so growth or profit-oriented (Colley, 2006. 86).

Some thoughts after the first week of Uni..

So the first week of Uni, we were given a lecture on sustainability in fashion. Some things I started wondering about, coming away from the lecture, was how sustainable is the world now.. Really. I’m actually just going to put my thoughts on this out there.. Honest thoughts.

We still have a LONG way to go.

But first things first, these are some questions we were told to think about.. 🙂

Would you consider yourself an ethical consumer? What about an ethical designer? Why or why not?
Regarding this question, if I had been asked this a few years ago, I probably would say ‘no’, that I was a total conspicuous consumer and a total slave to the fashion cycle. Fortunately for me, I went through some things in life that sparked a change in the way I thought and saw the world around me in general. I am definitely a LOT more ethical now than I was before, and that’s saying a lot. 🙂

In regards to my thoughts on what is ‘ethical consumption’,, you would probably get quite a different answer than most fashionistas out there. While a large percentage of ethical consumption deals with the environment and the humans and how both are treated in the making of the garment, there is still only a very small percentage of clothing labels out there that encompass the ANIMAL aspect of ethical consumerism as well.

Being vegan, and having been for a bit more than a year(I’m a total newbie, but it doesn’t stop me from having the same sentiments!), I personally refuse to buy any garment of clothing that has any part of an animal in it. Yes, that means leather, silk and even wool. I check clothing labels all the time and will not buy anything that states is made from the aforementioned materials, no matter how pretty I think it is..

As for the design aspects of this, I also refuse to use any animal derived material in my designs. As beautiful as silk is, and as warm as wool would make me on a cold winter’s day, none of it is more important than the life of the animal that is being taken advantage of to produce garments that I wear just for convenience, when plant or man-made alternatives are readily available.

Yes, I know that a lot of non-ethical practices go into creating some of these plant/man-made alternatives, but that is for a different post..

What do you perceive to be the challenges and barriers to being/becoming an ethical consumer and/or designer?
For me, I would ideally like to create a vegan clothing line that actively promotes veganism in all ways of life. This, in itself, would be quite a problem already, I think.. I did a lot of browsing and searching for Vegan labels, but it is truly difficult to find an ENTIRELY VEGAN fashion label. Stella McCartney comes close with her vegetarian brand, but she still uses wool and silk(ugh!) in some of her designs. I still think she is amazing with where her label is going, but I would totally have hearts in my eyes for her if she were completely VEGAN.

I think the challenges would be presenting the label to the market without getting scoffed at for taking things too far. People in this world are so conditioned into equating animal products(in the fashion world) with luxury, that trying to get them to wrap their heads around something as simple as a luxury faux-leather bag would be difficult.

To quote Ms. McCartney,
“It’s surprising to me that people cannot get their heads around a non-leather bag or shoe. They already exist out there, but unfortunately designers feel they have to slap a leather trim or sole on them. People need to start looking at the product, and if they like it, that’s all that matters. If it has an ethical or ecological edge, that’s a huge bonus. We address these questions in every other part of our lives except fashion.”

Like she says, we address this in every other part of our lives except in the clothes we wear. While people’s mindsets are changing now in regards to meat consumption and the animals that are killed to be served at our dinner tables, there is still a HUGE wall stopping people from looking at a Louis Vuitton leather handbag or a Christian Louboutin leather stiletto and seeing the poor animal that gave it’s life so the person using the item can flaunt the name of brand they are buying. It is all for show. How tragic is that?

What is your perception of designers who try to use sustainable practices and the products they produce?
As I state above with Stella McCartney, while her brand isnt’ Vegan, I am deeply envious(because I would love to do that too!) and HAPPY that there are people like her out there, bringing to light the plight of animals suffering for us and being able to produce fashionable, BEAUTIFUL collections. I always feel that if there is a fashion leader out there leading the way(even if it’s only in the leather department), paving the fashion world for others, that we can definitely start living in a world where other beings won’t have to be hurt and exploited just for the dominating species to appear beautiful.