Local Boise-based TV Channel 6 featured Sattler Eco Clothing Monday as part of its bi-weekly “Green Living” segment. Michelle Stark and the Green Living team have some really cool resources on the site including videos about eco-friendly cleaning products, how to save gas lessons from the ‘hypermilers’, and how to clean with lemons. Here’s a link to their site

To read more and watch the video

What is all the hulla-baloo about, how can clothing be eco-friendly? For starters let’s talk about organically grown cotton. The growth of conventional cotton is a very chemical intensive process. Growers dump synthetic fertilizers and pesticides on the cotton – it is commonly accepted that it takes approx. 9oz. ( just over half a pound ) of pesticides to produce just one t-shirt. So a wardrobe of just 10 shirts and 4 jeans dumps just shy of approx. 10 lbs. of pesticides into the ground. As a company, we have prevented over 1,100 lbs of pesticides from being dumped into the ground in the last 9 months alone. And I probably wouldn’t have believed it if you told me – but organic cotton is noticeably softer and breathes better than conventional cotton. Put an organic cotton shirt in one hand and a regular shirt in the other and you’ll notice that the conventional shirt feels like it has some kind of a film on it. How do you know if it is eco-friendly organic cotton? – Look for the certifications. We post them right online but you’ll want to look for the cotton to CERTIFIED organic cotton rather than just organic cotton. You should be able to notice a difference between a certified organic cotton product and it’s conventional cotton counterpart.

What about the screen-printing?

We talked about PVC more in-depth in this post, but the large majority of shirts are embellished using PVC or plastisol inks. How can you tell if your shirt has PVC or plastisol on it? If the screenprint is sitting on top of the shirt, you can see the artwork cracking or peeling, or if you can feel it when you pass your hand over it - then it is PVC or plastisol. What’s so bad about PVC? Again, visit this post here for a more comprehensive explanation but in short PVC comes with a host of toxic additives such as DEHP that is linked to cancer and birth defects. During the production of PVC, Dioxins, one of the most toxic chemicals and potent carcinogens known to science, are released into the air. It is estimated the U.S. screen-printing industry alone uses an estimated 1.5 million gallons of plastisol every year. Ironically, many companies take a shirt made of eco-friendly organic cotton and then put PVC-based inks on it. Sattler Clothing uses only water-based inks for all of our products as well as the custom work that we do.

What about Fair Labor Clothing?

In February of this year Megha Bahree wrote an excellent article in Forbes magazine portraying the reality of child labor today. Please note that this article was written less than 5 months ago, it is not old news. Child labor and unfair labor did not end with the Nike fiasco we still talk about today. According to the article, the government of India estimates that there are 12.6 million children under the age of 14 illegally employed in India.

Cottonseed farmer Talari Babu, who insists that he no longer employs children, told reporters that children make great employees because “They worked fast, much faster than the adults, and put in longer hours and didn’t demand long breaks. Plus, I could shout at them and beat or threaten them if need be to get more work out of them.’ He could also tempt them with candy and cookies and movies at night.”

Pesticides and child labor make for a bad combo. The Forbes magazine article continues -

“Their (the child laborers) bodies are no better at withstanding the poisons. At least once a week, says Davuluri Venkateshwarlu, head of Glocal, farmers spray the fields with pesticides like Nuvacron, banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and endosulfan, methomyl and Metasystox, considered by the EPA to be highly toxic. Venkateshwarlu ticks off the effects of overexposure: diarrhea, nausea, difficulty in breathing, convulsions, headaches and depression.”

There are organizations out there, like the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP) that can certify that a facility adheres to ethical standards of employment. WRAP certifies Sattler Clothing and we post their certifying book online so you know exactly what it means to be WRAP certified.

What about other eco-friendly fabrics like hemp and bamboo?

As we’ve mentioned before, like here, and here, we don’t sell any bamboo clothing products because of the chemical intensive process of converting bamboo to a textile. Read more about bamboo clothing here. We discovered a little while back that Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard feels the same way. Hemp can make some great products. If we could find some hemp products that could provide us with organic and fair labor certifications than we would consider introducing it into our eco-clothing product lineup. Until then we will continue trying to provide eco-friendly style for the masses with products that are certified organic cotton and fair labor.

Sattler Eco & Fair Labor Clothing

http://www.sattlerclothing.com

Freecycle is a non-profit,501(c)3 organizations that is all about giving and getting free stuff from people in your area. Through your local Freecycle community you can keep good stuff out of landfills and have your slightly loved stuff end up in the hands of someone who will give it a good home. Don’t you worry. Essentially, it is a craigslist.com but all the products are free. Got something that needs a new home? – Sign up for your local group and send an email offering the product to the members of the group and designate a recipient. Need something? Check the offerings from your local group and request to be a recipient of the product and then wait and see if you get lucky.

Freecycle started May of ‘03 down in Tucson, AZ in an effort to promote waste reductions and preserve the desert landscape rather than creating more landfills. Joining is free, and each group is moderated by a volunteer.