How big is YOUR closet?

Have you ever thought about all of those clothes you have in your closet that just sits there, that has caused harm on the earth and continues to every time you wash them?  Over consuming can be harmful to the earth because those material objects has to be grown, cut down, made, and then washed or cleaned with chemicals.

In the Design Activism, Fuad-Luke writes that the designers will have to be the first group of people that will have to change their behaviors.  Transforming thoughts and perceptions of the culture of design on sustainability will be tough for the designer who has attention in design research, studies, and practices.  The designer will have to learn to design for our needs so we stop over consuming and can learn to recycle or reuse our materials.  A particular strand of over consumption is where we purchase things, not to fulfill our basic needs, but to fill some voids about our lives and make social statements about ourselves.

I feel that when a designer begins with their ideas, they should look into how it will be made, as in if it will be harmful to the earth, along with what else can this product become after its first life-cycle.  When a designer makes something, they should offer ways of returns in order to get their objects back to transform them into something new and different or design to where the merchandise will be able to biodegrade safely and become food for something else.  We need to find ways that our closets do not need to be the size of a bedroom because of our over consumption.  We seem to want and desire more and more because advertising and corporations that tell us it is what we need to be fulfilled in our lives.

From what I have learned this semester, we need to consider where all of the products have come from, how they were put together, the how it can harm or help the earth.   If we keep allowing our landfills to pile up with harmful materials that do not become food for our earth and cannot keep objects in the right cycle, we will keep causing more harm.  I plan to start off recycling better by sorting my plastics, paper, cardboard etc., and taking it to our local recycling bins.  This will help keep materials in a closed cycle, not piling up in our landfills making it to where we do not have to keep making the materials, but to keep reusing.  As we continue to adapt to the recycling and reusing, I would like to learn more on how we can use organic materials and if there would be a way to go through what is already in a landfill to recycle what’s in there.

food for thought

What is the point of polluting our drinking water and earth for material objects? In the video of Dirty Laundry, China has thousand of factories near rivers that pollute their drinking water, seriously affecting the local people.  China, and others, needs to have better standards in order to keep a closed cycle involved in production of harmful materials.  Brands need to work together in order to clean up their supply chain and to not pollute the earth.

  “If humans are truly going to prosper, we will have to learn to imitate nature’s highly effective cradle-to-cradle system of nutrient flow and metabolism, in which the very concept of waste does not exist,” quoted from the Waste Equals Food chapter.  Once an organic material has been combined with synthetic fibers or harmful dyes, it can no longer be biodegradable and needs to be upcycled.  Therefore, I propose that we research and find a way to take apart, disassemble the fibers, and remove harmful dyes from the material to either keep the harmful chemicals in a closed cycle and with the organic materials that are disassembled; we can use them to give back to the earth as food for another.  With the upcycled materials and dyes, they can then be furthered used into its next lifecycle as another material or use. 

In the Waste Equals Food article, shoes were once biodegradable because they were made out of vegetable tanning instead of harmful dyes that polluted the earth.  Vegetable tanning has been replaced with chromium tanning, which is faster and cheaper but chromium produce toxins that are harmful to the earth.  We need to go back to making shoes that are not harmful on the earth and can become food for something else because as we walk in our shoes, it leaves harmful residue that cannot be consumed by the earth or ourselves.  Today’s shoes are being developed in countries such as China where there are few, if any, precautions taken to protect the people and ecosystems from chromium exposure.  The chromium chemicals are either being dumped in the water or incinerated which is against regulations but are done during the night when most would not expect, per the video of Dirty Laundry.  When developing our shoe soles, we need to look into soles that can degrade to enrich the environment instead of pollute it, our shoes as we walk, need to become food for something else.

In Textile Futures, one of Goldsworthy’s uses of inspiration in the Cradle to Cradle theory by McDonough and Braungart which is to design with the intention that products can be recycled through multiple life-cycles.  With technology advancing, it provides alternative answers and systems in the field of recycling.  With this technology, it will allow us to separate combined combinations of organic and synthetic fibers in order to keep that material in its rightful cycle like I proposed earlier in this blog.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

In the future, we will live in a world where all clothing is biodegradable and becomes food for another source.  We cannot allow our waste to pile up in landfills because that is not how the earth was made to work.  “Waste for one is food for another,” quoted from the video.

                In Waste Equals Food article we learn that we have two types of consumption, biological consumption and technical consumption.  Biological consumption is where things return safely to the air, water, and soil, where it is transformed back into natural consumption. With technical consumption, it has to be recaptured in its own closed cycles because they will not return safely and they can leak chemicals into the earth but we are dependent on these technical materials.

                “If humans are truly going to prosper, we will have to learn to imitate nature’s highly effective cradle-to-cradle system of nutrient flow and metabolism, in which the very concept of waste does not exist,” Waste Equals Food article.  We will learn how to make products, such as shampoo bottles, toothpaste tubes, and cartons that are strong enough for its use and then be able to biodegrade and give back to the earth.  We have too many containers out there that are only used for a week to a month to just throw away and pile up in our landfills.  With what we have created, we will continue to recycle the products into other uses instead of just bury them and with the objects already buried, we will start a program to sort through the landfills and start recycling what we can through there also.

Susan Lyons, in the video of Rhoener Textiles, has worked with the company to make non-harmful materials to the earth and ourselves and to not jeopardize the strength and quality of those that are harmful to the earth.  Once the material have reached the end of its lifecycle, it can then become mulch for the ground and in six months it is compost and gone.  We will use materials such as organic cotton and hemp along with research to find others that will not be harmful, biodegrade, and become food for the soil.

                With our technology we will set up local drop off stations to be picked up and either disposed of properly, reuse them or make something new out of them.  Cars will have to be transformed to use less gas and emit less pollution into the earth and even to not use any gas at all.  A car recall for all older models that do not meet regulations and that put more pollutants out than the standard car will be implemented and enforced.

                If we don’t start living today, what will our future generations look forward to!?

Growing your own clothes locally..

Biomimicry is the examination of nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements to take inspiration from in order to solve human problems.  Biomimicry can unlock secrets of evolution, new beginnings to textile design to emerge per Textile Futures chapter 5.  In the eyes of Suzanne Lee’s, to ‘grow your clothes’ is not necessarily using a field full of cotton or the wool off a sheep, but to literally growing bacteria in a bathtub of green tea and sugar to form to a mold.  This material also takes to dyes a lot easier than cotton and other materials, giving this an upper hand but this process is still under works because it is not waterproof, and in today’s world, we need water proof and sweat proof.  We may not use this for the apparel industry, but we could look into growing our furniture and household products so we could use less of cotton, a material that is harmful to the earth more sparingly.  Per the Textile Futures book, chapter 5 says that it can take decades for an article of clothing to decompose and as it does so, it releases deadly chemicals and harmful gases into the soil.  We cannot continue to throw our materials out and let our earth ‘take care of them’ because we are causing damage to it and ourselves.  With the grown materials, after they have reached the end of their lifecycle usage for us, we can dispose of them like our organic food and it will become compost, not causing any harm to our earth.  By growing our own clothing and forming it to what we need, we would build for durability and not overbuild, using materials sparingly. 

Another way to help our earth is to shop locally, by enhancing diversity, celebrating traditions, building your community, creating meaningful employment and respecting your local environmental conditions as stated in the Local and Light chapter.  With producing locally, it can give meaning and a change for distinctiveness and limited editions.  My only problem with shopping locally is seeing everyone else in the same clothing so in order to avoid this, small town producers should only produce one of each item in each size so it would be on a first come first serve basis and this will allow the producer to have free range on creativity.  By producing or growing our own materials locally, we would eliminate the transportation cycles that a textile goes through before even reaching the user.  When producing products, we need to look towards lightweight materials for a lower environmental impact, but we cannot look to do that to everything, because we will need warmth come winter time.  Also by shopping locally, you can buy organic produce and help farmers and gardeners out.  There would also be less shipping of produce and shipped produce is more than likely not grown organically.

To this day I feel that there are many entrepreneurs and fashion designers out there that we should be able to live locally and experience a great life by doing so and this would give more people the opportunity to express individuality.  We need to learn to trust in ourselves and our communities and grow sustainably together by using materials sparingly and shopping locally.

A No Waste Economy

In the How Will We Conduct Business article, we have taken advantage of our earth for many years thinking that it provided us with an endless source of natural resources.  In the United States alone, we generate 12 billion tons of solid waste a year which pollutes our earth harming it and us.  A dollar sign was never put on drilling or mining our resources so we took advantage and what we needed until we found out that the earth does not make more of what we are taking from it.  Our view is for an approach to manufacture over a long term to be properly defined and executed and continually updated and supported to evaluate and minimize impacts to the earth, called industrial ecology, ‘Industrial Ecology: The Concept.’

To this day, a product visits one of two fates at the end of its useful life, it can be either be buried in a landfill or incinerated, or it can be recycled or reused.  ‘The ‘closed-loop’ dream of industrial ecology will not be complete until all products that are sent out into the world are folded back into the system’ (How Will We Conduct Business).  In the apparel industry, for our clothing and fabric products not to pile up in a landfill, it will all have to be biodegradable and fertilize the ground or reusable in many eco-friendly ways.  Hemp is completely biodegradable and is one of the few plants whose byproducts can either be eaten, sat on, written on, and used as medicine, fuel, worn or squirted into a machine.  Not only is hemp well rounded in how we can use it but it also improves water quality because it does not use pesticides or herbicides in order to grow.  Hemp is naturally resistant to mold, bacteria and pests and therefore has no toxic runoff from the fields.  It also adds nutrients to the soil, removes toxins, aerates the soil and prevents soil erosion with its long roots.  Hemp actually leaves the soil in better condition than before it was planted.  Another eco-friendly aspect is hemp’s dense growth helps control and eliminates weeds; it also is a high-yield crop that matures on an average of 120 days and is able to be grown on the same land every two to three years, Hemp: Historic Fiber Remains Controversial.  

For the food and car industry, plastics can be derived from plant cellulose, and since hemp is the greatest cellulose producer on Earth it only makes sense to make non-toxic, biodegradable plastic from hemp and other organics, instead of letting our dumps fill up with waste.  These composites are less expensive than dangerous fiberglass counterparts which give hemp the upper hand.  It could also replace carbon and glass fibers, which have environmental and weight problems on the earth, Hemphasis. http://www.hemphasis.net/Building/plasticmettle.htm

All of these wonderful facts about hemp make hemp the best choice all around for us to have a sustainable world in the future.  People do like the feel of cotton, but if we can intertwine hemp to feel and look the same, we will have overcome the harsh ways cotton is on our world, and make a better future.  When we are not using a biodegradable material, we need to use materials sparingly, to build for durability and to not overbuild, How Will We Conduct Business.  When you think of a bee, they build what they only need with a minimum number of materials and success to survive.  As we continue to live on the earth, we need to learn that minimum is okay and will be enough for us to survive as we continue to learn and grow.

Free electricity from the sun

                Could the world one day come to an end if we don’t find better ways to live?  What if we found a way to use our sun as our energy; the sun that is clean, safe, and limitless and produced fabrics that biodegrade?

                In 2050, a sustainable future will include solar panels on our roof tops and a farm field full of the solar panels to take place of ever having to dig for another drop of oil!  In this case, certain jobs would no longer be available, but if we could learn to live on less of a luxurious life, then we could cut back on jobs and share them.  For the clothing aspect, once we find clothing that biodegrades on its own, grows fast enough with no help and less process, and will withstand our expectations, then we will be able to change our style and have fun.  If we put solar panels on our roofs that process these materials, the sun would be able to power the machines and we would not have to ever use coal or oil again, there is a solution out there, we just have to take the time and effort to find it.

                To this day, we have solar panels made of silicon.  The atoms in the silicon have to be able to move in order to produce more energy so as of now they are mixed with a few other atoms to allow the silicon atoms to move around (http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/solar-cell2.htm).  This does not allow the silicon to absorb as much energy, more of the infrared light, so research will need to be done to find a better substance to absorb more of the sun.  One day, the solar panels will be 80% efficient at capturing solar energy, giving enough energy to power our homes plus some per the 2057 The World video.

                In today’s world and in the near future, we will have to learn when buying is needed, enough, and it no longer is a substitute of self-worth, Limiting Consumption article.  Advertising will have to become restrained so that we will not think we need the new and best thing out there and then consumption will be lowered because most of what we consume is wasted or unwanted in the first place!  Once our clothing is all biodegradable, then we will not have to worry about our clothing waste as much because our landfills will not be piling up with clothing.

                In the Thinking Ahead article, in order for us to achieve a sustainable future, we will have to challenge our beliefs, brainstorm alternative visions and become familiar with visions of the future from both the science side and humanity side.  We will have to look to the past to learn from our mistakes and make a better future for tomorrow.  There are also benefits of enhancing the future consciousness because it will help foster mental health, improve higher-order thinking abilities, planning, problem solving and it can also work against depression because who wants to think that one day we may not have a future for our children.

                Not only are we going to have to move towards sustainability to see a future, we are going to have to get scientists and practitioners to see a clear vision towards sustainability because they are our leaders, Visioneering article.  Visioneering requires synergy of inspiration, conviction, action, determination, and completion.  In the visioneering system, there must be a purpose; a reason a vision needs attention to get solved, such as our future.  We must envision our future of sustainability with our solar panels and biodegrading clothing in order for it to stick and not remain a daydream.

Hemp is the Solution! (Per the Hempsters: Plant the Seed video)

                Hemp is one of the few plants that can replace wood products saving our forests, it is medicinal, it can either be eaten, sat on, written on, worn, painted on a wall or squirted into a machine and reaps great benefits for the earth per the Hempsters: Plant the Seed video and Hemp: Historic Fiber Remains Controversial article. 

                The only reason hemp is not grown in the U.S. is because of the confusion, Hempsters: Plant the Seed.  At this very  moment, hemp is illegal to grow in the United States because it looks too much like the marijuana plant, but it does not grow the same type of foliage (the part you can smoke) and if you do try to smoke hemp, you can end up getting sick.  There are also ways to determine the difference in the growing, by looking how close together it is grown, hemp being grown close together and growing taller while marijuana needs space in order to grow. 

                There are several benefits in choosing hemp over the other products.  The ”Are you Being Bamboozled” pamphlet emphasizes that most bamboo textile products are actually rayon, a manufactured polymer, so that shows that bamboo textile products are not what we really think they are, eliminating that choice.  In the Hempster’s video, it showed that simply pushing the seed into the ground would be enough germination for the plant to grow.  It is also naturally resistant to mold, bacteria and pests, giving it an edge over cotton because cotton requires pesticides to resist those and pesticides hurts us and the earth that we live on.  Hemp’s other eco-friendly aspect to cotton is that its dense growth makes it a prime contributor to weed control and elimination, matures in an average of 120 days, and can re-grow on the same land in a matter of two to three years.  The entire plant, from the seed to the foliage, can be used for products such as building materials, paper and foods and also helps deplete the forestation

                In a test, 100% hemp beat cotton every time because it had 62% greater tear strength and 102% greater tensile strength.  This will help clothes last longer like some people desire.  Hemp has also showna result of being eight times the tensile strength and four times the durability of other natural fibers, giving hemp the upper hand.  Hemp can also be made into carpets, sweaters and t-shirts and even shoes!  Per Kevin Webster, vice president of marketing in the Hemp: Historic Fiber Remains Controversial article says that if hemp can be spun fine enough, it can compete against cotton fairly successfully.

                Since most small farmers do not like the inherent expense and paperwork required to grow organic cotton, organic cotton is not an option to them, per the Controversy Broiling article.  The Hemp: Historic Fiber Remains Controversial article specifies that in a matter of five years, the U.S. will legalize hemp and I believe that when this happens, there will need to be control over it and monitoring.  Since we have only been able to import the material, we will be behind on processing it, but we can learn to adapt and research for what is better for the world.  Also, by being only able to import hemp, it has given hemp a higher price over cotton, making consumers choosing the cheaper material, but once we are able to legally grow it on our own land, that will cut the costs of hemp and give hemp the advantage over cotton. 

The cultivation of cotton… I’m sure we can find better ways!

Did you know that the cultivation of cotton is grown on just 2.4% of the world’s arable land and consumes 11% of the world’s pesticides and in the United States cotton is cultivated on 4% of the land and uses 25% of all pesticides applied in agriculture for cotton?

The Sustainability of Cotton specifies that cotton requires large amounts of water both for cultivation and processing.  Cotton is overtaking our water sources because rivers are being diverted and dammed off.  By doing this, it is having significant effects on wildlife and water availability for human consumption.  Water use can be reduced by introducing more sustainable irrigation techniques to reduce salinisation and erosion.  Farmers need to reduce salinisation in order to reuse the land already farmed and not have to continue to cut down forests and dam water sources.  Salinisation occurs when evapo-transpiration exceeds rainfall and is a threat for irrigated areas in particular.  Farmers also need to consider rain-fed regions, convert to low-input conventional farms, and to decrease in water consumption.  If farmers took the time, they could use livestock manure as a fertilizer which would supply nutrients to the crops and contribute to soil biological processes, soil structure, root penetrability and water retention.  When using a synthetic fertilizer, it can contribute to global warming because the production of nitrate and ammonium needs a lot of energy giving organic manure an advantage.  

On the website of Cotton, Inc., it specifies several uses for cotton that can help earth such as using cotton as mulch to help prevent erosion but it goes through a lot of dye processing and becomes all natural mulch for grass.  Cotton also helps trap carbon and takes out approximately CO2 emissions from 7 million cars.  Cotton can be good for the earth, but we need to find better ways of cultivating the crop.

Organic agriculture protects the health of people and the planet by reducing the overall exposure to toxic chemicals from synthetic pesticides that can end up in the ground, air, water and food supply.  Because organic agriculture doesn't use toxic and persistent pesticides, choosing organic products is an easy way to help protect yourself.

Should we choose Natural over Synthetic fibers?

           Did you know that it takes up to 10 different batches of indigo blue to dye your jeans? – Charline Ducas, Textile Exchange video.

Synthetic fibers made from petrochemicals have recently gotten a bad reputation as being extremely harmful to the environment because they are made from non-renewable resources and they take massive amounts of energy to produce.

Natural fibers are known as breathable, renewable and biodegradable, and comfortable to the skin.  Natural fibers such as cotton, wool, hemp or bamboo, just to name a few, have been thought of as being less harmful to the earth but they are harmful in their own ways unless we can start to grow things organically. Cotton uses the most water and use of pesticides and wool has pesticides either injected or poured onto the wool just to give a couple of examples of the harm to our earth.

We need to learn to slow our consumption of having the new and best thing out there and let nature naturally grow the resources that we need because per Chapter One, Material Diversity, it takes a large quantity of water and use of pesticides in order to grow cotton, a natural fiber.  Pesticides are harmful in that they pollute our drinking water and cause harm to the environment and we all need water to survive. Pesticides also account for 50% of the total cost of cotton production and per Charline Ducas from the Textile Exchange video, we all could be more clever, use less of what we think is necessary, and clean up the mess produced.

Charline Ducas has specified that only 1% of cotton is grown organically as of now, and their mission is “to inspire and equip people to accelerate sustainable practices in the textile value chain.”  If we can get the farmers to grow materials organically, organic natural fibers are the way to go. They may not last as long, but they will take their course and can biodegrade and not pile up in a landfill.  Per the Material Diversity, organic production can be seen as a set of agricultural practices and a tool for social change.  Also the use of rainfall to grow cotton would be beneficial to the healthier soils and less demand on the water infrastructure, but the rain-fed cotton also tends to be of poorer quality. After the fibers are grown organically, there are going to have to be some changes met in the process from with the use of chemicals and recommendations for dyeing.

One of our greatest challenges mentioned in the Material Diversity chapter is that we need to become skilled at knowing and practicing sustainability. I believe that natural is the best way to go because it will biodegrade and use less chemicals to make.  There definitely needs to be some changes made in our usage of natural fibers and more people like Charline Ducas to make people aware of what we can do to help and be more responsible to our earth.  She talks about how we need to be environmentally better, and find eco-efficient ways to produce and provide products in order to support the transition to a greater sustainability.

Food vs. Apparel

                Fashioning Sustainability has compared the clothing industry to the food industry, with lessons to be learned.  The food industry is increasing the demand for healthy food, fair trade, and organic products.  These standards are driving up the performance and supermarkets to be greener and more ethical.  This indicates that the apparel industry and ourselves are guilty of polluting the earth and not being sustainable with the clothing.

                In the clothing industry, Fashioning Sustainability has indicated that cotton needs a lot of water in order for it to grow which has made agricultural practices worse. Cotton is a widely used fiber to make many different pieces of clothing.  In some cases, over 10 tons of water is used to grow enough cotton to make just one pair of jeans. The use of pesticides to help grow cotton can cause serious health problems to cotton workers, soil degradation and biodiversity loss. Some of the issues faced because of this are accessibility to clean drinking water because of the dying houses that pollute it and from the production that involves some of the most toxic agrochemicals.  One solution when washing the clothing is to use liquids that contain less than 5% phosphates or are phosphate free.  In the Ecosystem Millennium Assessment, it indicates that with deforestation, generally leads to decreased rainfall, and since the cotton needs a substantial amount of water, we need to keep our forests and trees alive.  Not only is the growing of cotton hard on the earth, but the transportation to get fabric/clothing where it needs to be is not always a good source.  Sometimes the fabric/clothing has to be transported by plane and the planes are the worst on the carbon footprint.  Clothing is in too high of a demand, and it needs to be slowed down to help preserve the earth.

                Washing, drying, and ironing often accounts for the most significant use of energy in the clothing lifecycle.  Depending on which materials the clothes are made from, a majority of the carbon ‘footprint’ of clothing can be caused in its washing and care, contributing to climate change.  Some of us are guilty for just refreshing our clothes when we wash them instead of actually needing them cleaned.  We must change our habits when it comes to washing our clothing and decide when and what is dirty.  When your clothing is actually dirty, you should do a full load at the lowest temperature.  Instead of drying and ironing your clothing, you should air dry them flat and this could help reduce the impact a piece of clothing has on the climate change.  By making these changes, they not only help the earth, but they also help save you money!  An example provided by Ecosystem Millennium Assessment is the increase of food production.  Food production typically involves an increase use of water and fertilizers or expansion of the area of cultivated land, these same actions often degrade other ecosystem services such as reducing the availability of water for other uses, degrading water quality, reducing biodiversity, and decreasing forest cover; and this all goes for the use of cotton for the clothing industry.

                In the work of Walsh & Brown, they have pointed out that soil erosion, pesticides, water, electricity, and diesel fuels are all parts of the growing phase of a t-shirt.  To help reduce soil erosion, cover crops and compost are two good techniques discussed.  Recent research also indicates that organic farming methods can reduce the amount of soil leaving the ground, and since there is no use of pesticides and less water consumption, organic growing makes a better choice for all because it also cuts back on the cost.  In the article they also stress that the consumer care overwhelms the impacts of the other stages of making and shipping a t-shirt.

More farmers and consumers need to realize that organic growing is in more than one way the better choice.  The next time you buy a t-shirt, you should look at the label for organic cotton and realize how much better that shirt was on the earth; and the next time you have a load of laundry, you should ask yourself if it really is dirty or if you could wear it one more time.  More than likely, you will be the only one who knows if it was not previously washed!