Living in a Materialistic World

“But I do know we’re deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.”
― Mitch Albom

How many times a month or maybe even a week do you find yourself buying an item just simply because it is there for you to buy and get immediate satisfaction from it? We all do it; I myself am guilty of this. How did our society become so materialistic? It is stated in ‘The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability’ that historically, individuals were more closely involved in making all the items they needed in order to survive as well as creating what they wanted to entertainment and leisure; in other words making and using artifacts was more important than buying and owning them.

Time is of the essence in today’s society, no one wants to wait for anything. Everything about design is speeding up, and now the product development process can take a year or less according to ‘The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability’. How does this effect sustainability though? The quicker products must be produced to meet consumers’ needs and demands means the quicker raw materials must be produced and harvested which in turn releases more harmful chemicals and more damage to the physical earth because more product are being needed to be produced. If the speed of which consumers feel the need to buy new things is slowed down then the speed things are produced can slow down which mean the rapid speed at which we use up our resources can also slow down. How to do this? Start making products that last longer! Reduce the need to buy new things all the time!

Reflection Two

How do we get the apparel industry to be sustainable is the constantly asked question. This week especially has raised some questions in my mind about the way the apparel industry goes about making all of our clothing. It was disturbing learning about all of the chemicals that are extremely harmful to humans and to the environment, chemicals such as carcinogens that have been proven to cause cancer! Being that I have had numerous family members affected by cancer this was especially alarming to me. I learned that also that some types of color dyes are prohibited because they are so allergenic.

Now taking away all of these harmful chemicals that we use in the production of making clothing won’t do any good unless we make our products either biological nutrients or technical nutrients. Biological nutrients are nutrients that can be decomposed back into the earth, Technical nutrients are nutrients are nutrients that are kept in a closed loop within the industries and a just reused to make new products. These are both a key factor in becoming sustainable, but the most important this is that these two nutrients must be kept separately within the product otherwise they are useless.

There are numerous retailers that I learned about that practice reusing clothing and making them into something new! For example that was cut into a skirt, that’s genius. If we can all practice this to some extent I think we could help a great deal while we’re waiting on the big companies to make their move into the right direction.

Dyeing Without Causing Our Environment to Die

The dyeing of clothing is a MAJOR part of the apparel industry. The big question though is, can we dye our clothing without harming the environment…is this possible? With enough effort and dedication I believe it is possible to make the dyeing of products non-harmful to the environment and the workers, but also make the whole product produced either a biological nutrient or a technical nutrient. Not only could doing this help the environment but it could also save companies millions of dollars in the long run.

Most consumers have absolutely no idea what harmful chemicals are in the dyeing solutions that make our clothing all the colors that we have grown to love. Some of these harmful chemical have been prohibited from use and others only have certain regulations against them but are not prohibited from use. Some of these harmful chemicals used in disperse dyes that are under regulations according to ‘AAFA Restricted Substance List’ are Blue 1, Blue 35, Blue 106, Blue 124, Orange 3, Orange 37/59/76, Red 1, and Yellow 3; all of which are restricted because of their allergenic potential. Some of the harmful chemicals used in Azo dyes that are prohibited according to ‘Global Organic Textile Standard’ are Chloroaniline, Amino-4-nitrotoluene, Dimethyl-4, and Oxydianiline just to name a few out of the 27 they have listed. Harmful chemicals that are not on either of these lists that was mentioned numerous times in ‘Cradle to Cradle’ due to its effect on the environment and the people working around it is Carcinogens. Carcinogens are substances that are directly involved in causing cancer. It is scary to think that industries are willingly letting their employees work in environments filled with these chemicals leaving them with only a thin face mask to protect themselves as it enters into the outside environment.

Although it is hard to bring this action, it is possible to make the apparel industry much safer for the environment and its workers. In ‘cradle to cradle’ it is stated that “biological nutrients are useful to the biosphere, while technical nutrients are useful for the technosphere, the systems of industrial processes”. To help bring this to a reality we must first get rid of the known environmentally harmful chemicals we use in the dyeing process. To replaces these harmful chemicals there needs to be a list made of all the chemicals that can be used as either biological nutrient or technological nutrients. The new must put this list into action! Making sure that these and only these chemicals are used, here’s the catch though….the biological nutrients and the technological nutrients must be kept separate so they can be later recycled and reused for other products thus saving money. Last we must re-design the system that was previously used. Although this is very time consuming and tedious work, it will save money and our environment in the long way. I think we can afford to spend a little extra time on how we produce thing to save our environment, don’t you!

Reflection

I am surprised so far at how interesting this class is and how interesting I’m sure it is going to turn out to be. I never knew or even thought about what negative effects the apparel industry has on the environment and the people and animals that are around the production of apparel at some point.

I was especially surprised at how negatively cotton effects the environment. I would have never imagined that in a million years. I also learned about some new possible alternatives to cotton through the comments on my blog such as hemp or milk-based fibers. I believe we should all take a look further into these alternatives; who knows they could potentially save our environment from a lot of harm if consumers start demanding the alternatives over cotton.

I’ve also learned that in order for us to actually make a change as far as the pink elephant, we must take action and make changes in every aspect and step in the apparel industry for us to actually make a difference. Knowing what we know now we can take our information and help make other people aware of the issues and prompting them to pay attention to the clothes that they buy, who makes them, how are they made, and where do they come from. By looking at these we can all make an informed decision and decided on if we want to continue to support that company by buying their products or choose not to and look for a more sustainable company.

Cotton…jeopardizing our future well-being?

            Who would have thought that cotton, our most used natural fiber in the production of clothing could have so many adverse effects on the ecosystem and the people who help produce it into clothing….not me. I was shocked to find out all of the harmful things that are taking place during the growing of the cotton. How could something that grows naturally bring about so many concerns for the environment and the people working around it?

            Do you know how many chemicals and pesticides are sprayed on cotton before it is harvested, or how much water is needed to grow enough cotton just to make a pair of jeans? I certainly hope the cotton manufacturers clean the cotton very well before it is made into clothing that we put on our bodies after discovering how many pesticides are applied to the cotton on the fields. These pesticides include aldicarb, parathion, methamidopho, and nitrogen synthetic fertilizers; all of these of which are acutely hazardous and poisonous to humans and the fertilizer is 300 times more potent than CO2 which is known for causing global warming! The amount of water need to grow the cotton is even more surprising to me. For just the amount of cotton needed to make a basic tee it requires at least 400 gallons of water. To order enough tees for say your sorority or fraternity for an event, you just used roughly 76,000 gallons on tees you will probably never wear again after you graduate college!! Now that just seems ridiculous to me, there has to be a better way to make use of the water and conserve it in some way.

            Is there any way these issues can be solved or there effects on humans and the ecosystem be reduced?...yes. Conventionally grown cotton is renewable, biodegradable, and environmentally friendly, conventionally grown cotton has also become more drought and heat tolerant that requires less chemicals & pesticides. If all manufactures switch over to this type of cotton then the pesticide and chemicals problem would be greatly reduced. To help conserve the water that is needed for growing cotton would be implementing an irrigation system. If these two things were brought into action in all cotton fields we could make a great difference in the sustainability of the apparel industry. So let’s demand change starting today!

References:

Cotton and Environmental Issues. (n.d.). Green Lifestyle Magazine. Retrieved June 7, 2012, from http://greenlifestylemagazine.net/issue-5/cotton.php

Cotton and the Environment - Organic Trade Association. (n.d.). Organic Trade Association. Retrieved June 7, 2012, from http://www.ota.com/organic/environment/cotton_environment.html

How Many Gallons of Water Does it Take to Make . . . : TreeHugger. (n.d.). TreeHugger. Retrieved June 7, 2012, from http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/how-many-gallons-of-