Here you are.
- Seattle Urban Farm Company
This month, I’ll be volunteering with the Seattle Urban Farm Company, learning about permaculture and the local food movement.
I mentioned them once before in a post for Worldchanging. Come check them out at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show (Feb 20- 24th at Seattle Convention Center). Look for the t-shirts I printed, (bearing this logo designed by owner Colin McCrate and friends) soon!
In honor of all this, here’s “Farmer in the City,” from Scott Walker’s amazing Tilt (1995).
- Clothes the Loop
4.5 percent of waste sent to municipal landfills - 4 million tons according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - is textiles ::source
The New York Times magazine has a few slides on handmade recycled clothes.
The recycled T-shirts that are at the core of the Rogues Gallery (of Portland, ME) men’s-wear line are sorted, processed, printed and reworked in a warehouse in Portland, Me., by a crew whose backgrounds have little to do with fashion.
“I’m as proud of this system as I am of the designs,” says Natalie Chanin, the woman behind Alabama Chanin, a line of richly embroidered recycled shirts and dresses that are cut, painted and sewn by hand in rural Florence, Ala. Her stitchers, some of whom quilted alongside her grandmothers, are part of a cottage-industry style of manufacturing in which people work out of their homes.
While difficult to do at a large scale, as far as I can tell, recycling old clothes into new styles can help close the loop on what is typically a wasteful industry. It slows the pull on virgin resources (and crops like cotton are very land and water intensive to grow) and we don’t have to forgo new fashions. We can keep our cake, and eat it again.
According to one source, “over 70% of the world’s population use second-hand clothes.” Indeed, to recycle clothes has become synonymous with donating them to a charity, which will rarely re-manufacture them. If we Americans start recycle our clothing at a larger scale, where will the rest of the world get theirs? Some would argue that this opens up opportunities for local producers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to sell the clothes they’re making for American and European markets locally.
Today I post for you “Indestructible Life!” by Olympia, WA’s Old Time Relijun. Enjoy!
- Small is the New Big
Small is the New Big is a book of blog posts by Seth Godin on marketing and keeping your story relevant (whether you’re a musician, an entrepreneur, a politician, etc.). Themes I noticed:
Blogging: Do it early and do it often (but not too often) and stay on top of the technology. Blogging is a conversation, he says, and can make or break a brand. It is also a great equalizer, leveling the playing field to the point that only ideas that are “remarkable”-that are worth talking about-get any air time or get spread. Godin has been blogging for a while, and has provocative tips on blogging. He distinguishes three types of blogs:
1) Cat blogs - where you talk about your boyfriend, your cat, etc.
2) Boss blogs - where your audience is clear and limited for a purpose (within an organization, for instance.
3) Viral blogs - blogs that are spreading ideas, linking to each other, and, according to Godin, “changing the face of marketing, journalism, and the spread of ideas.”Metaphoring: Godin doesn’t talk explicitly about metaphor, but most of his posts are themselves metaphors. It’s a great, simple tool for coming up with interesting things to write about. He’ll hear about something interesting or mundane, and then talk about how it or is not like (purple cows) (viral marketing) (authenticity) (marketing wants) (technology) (etc…). So simple. His background and his understanding of business and marketing are solid, but it’s how he tells a new story everyday to convey the same basic principles over and over that makes his blog remarkable. Each post looks at something he’s talked about before from a fresh new angle.
Storytelling: By using metaphors to expose new facets of his expertise, Godin is constantly telling stories. Each post is a story, and connects to the larger narrative of his work. By reading it for just a few days, you feel like you have a pretty good grasp of his voice, his punkish character, and yet you want to keep reading. And storytelling is key for companies in the new economy. Being authentic, being remarkable, and then telling your authentic story in a way that consumers find remarkable is the best way to compete.
Wanting: Over and over, Godin says things like “sell me what I want or I’m leaving.” Marketing is not about needs. It is about wants. It is about finding out what people want and giving it to them, nothing else. People want to be a part of a story. They will want to be a part of your story, if it’s a story worth telling.
- “as the world falls down”
A great overview of the messy world of sustainable fabric I’ve just dipped my toes in: “A World Consumed by Guilt” at the New York Times.
We all make compromises every day. Making them with your eyes open instead of arbitrarily is the best piece of advice I could give.
“Future Fashion White Papers” (via PSFK) may be a good resource for making compromises with your eyes open:
FutureFashion White Papers aims to educate all people interested in sustainable fashion and offers safe environmental practices for the industries and consumers. It is an invaluable and ground-breaking resource that proves how style and sustainability can coexist.
We shall see.
Today’s postsong: Trying to navigate the world of sustainable fabric is kind of like going to masquerade ball after eating a dosed apricot, and ending up dancing with David Bowie… Or not, but either way, today I bring you David Bowie, singing “as the world falls down” from the movie Labyrinth.
- Provenance
I’ve been blogging a lot about “locally grown” clothing, the “100 mile closet“, and other ways the apparel industry can mimic what’s been happening with food systems for several years. The provenance of our clothes—where they came from, through what processes and systems—is just as important as the provenance of our food.
Monocle magazine makes a good business case for why provenance is something businesses should pay attention to (via PSFK):
Provenance became a big issue for brands low, medium and high in 2007. A spate of scares involving Chinese-made products saw the world’s largest toy maker, Mattel, recall 21 million toys due to concern over lead paint. Gap was stung when it was found that children in India were employed to make garments for their Western peers. In the showrooms of many luxury brands, buyers were starting to question if the clothes and accessories were really made in the UK, France and Italy.
In 2008, provenance is going to become more important at luxury goods companies as CEOs decide whether to downgrade their brands (they wouldn’t call it this, but we would) by shutting workshops and moving the work to Asia to improve margins, or take a long-term view and keep investing in craftsmanship, education and maintaining manufacturing facilities above the shop.
The decision should be a simple one. The fake handbag might be made in China, but if 90 per cent of the real thing is made there as well, where’s the point of difference other than price? Against this backdrop, a growing movement for authenticity, craftsmanship and heritage is creating greater opportunities for artisinal companies.
When we start paying attention to ‘provenance’—where stuff comes from—what changes will we demand from the fashion industry? How will we vote with our dollars?
- [and clothing]
“‘In some cases transport is only 20% of the total energy budget of a food’s production’… [D]o not be fooled by the food miles (although they are certainly interesting and useful) and remember to keep the bigger life cycle picture in mind when choosing your food.”
But 20% is still a lot.
- Couldn’t have said it (better) myself
“do something for mother nature cause the bitch has been good to you.”
- Wear Milk?
So there I was, minding my own business, when this Seattle P.I. article befell me:Fabric options have expanded thanks to innovations in processing that can convert unexpected candidates such as milk, seaweed, pineapple, corn, bamboo, yak and the ever-green hemp into soft, alluring textiles… ::full article
Milk? Yes it’s true. The idea of fabric made from milk protein has been around since World War I…
…when the Germans, interested in other sources for fabric, discovered milk’s potential for cloth, he said.
“People observed that when milk dries out it makes a tough film. There’s a potential to make fibers out of that,” he said.
After getting rid of milk fat, the milk is curdled and the proteins are separated and concentrated into a viscous solution, he said.
That solution is forced through a capillary and is then hardened into a solid fiber that can be spun around a bobbin, he said.
It requires 100 pounds of skim milk to make 3 pounds of milk fiber, he said.
For those reasons, including its durability and the proliferation of other fabrics such as polyester, he said, milk fabric never really became popular.
One maker, in China, is Cyarn Textile:
Cyarn milk protein fiber dewaters and skims milk, and manufactures the protein spinning fluid suitable for wet spinning process by means of new bio-engineering technique, and new high-grade textile fiber is made by combining them. In April 2004, it passed Oeko-Tex Standard 100 green certification for the international ecological textiles.
Now I’m confused on whether the process skims milk (leaving drinkable skim milk and fiber as a biproduct) or turns skimmed milk into fabric (leaving nothing drinkable). If it’s the former, there’s an obvious by-product synergy waiting to happen.
Now what was that about seaweed and pineapple?
- (Local) Us vs. (Fair Trade) Them?
There may be tension between Free Trade and Fair Trade, and tension between Free Trade and Local Trade.
But between Local Trade and Fair Trade?
Worldchanging’s Erica Barnett, (who covers transportation and local politics for Seattle’s the Stranger) writes on the complex impacts of choosing to buy local, buy fresh, buy organic, and/or buy fair-trade food. A decision to buy local here could have impacts on third-world jobs—jobs that other consumers are trying to protect by buying fair trade.…[I]t turns out eating local can have unintended consequences as well. Recently proponents of strengthening fair trade markets in emerging economies have pointed out that the trend toward “eating local” may hurt farmers who depend heavily on overseas markets to make a living… Food miles, then, are not the single most important measure of responsible food consumption; how our food choices shape local economies (including those thousands of miles away) may be just as important.
Barnett links us to a recent article from the San Francisco Chronicle, by William G. Mosely, co-author of Hanging by a Thread: Cotton, Globalization and Poverty in Africa. Mosely writes:
We’re getting a glimpse of the future of this debate in the United Kingdom, where the tension between the local food and fair trade movements is acute. Just recently, the U.K. Soil Association, a nonprofit group that promotes sustainable and organic farming, called on the British government to restrict imports of organic produce brought in by air. In a concession to the fair trade movement, this group would allow for imports from countries actively seeking to promote organic and fair trade markets within their own borders. Despite this concession, British fair trade activists are worried.
Barnett and Mosely agree that the solution
…is to push for stronger regulations on working conditions and better assistance for farmers in developing economies. In the meantime, we would do well to eschew zealotry — organic, locavorean, or fair-trade — in exchange for a mix of all three. Throwing up our hands and buying out-of-season, conventionally grown and paid-for produce is far worse than choosing fair trade over local, or vice versa.
Are fair trade, free trade and local trade necessarily at odds? Can we limit barriers to trade, within structures that ensure fair prices are paid to independent farmers, both here and abroad? If consumers believe they are faced with a dilemma between a) supporting their local economy and limiting the carbon
footprint of their purchases by shopping locally or b) supporting developing economies on the other side of the world through fair/direct trade purchases, they very well may end up “throwing up their hands and buying out-of-season, conventionally grown and paid-for produce” and clothing.As movements, “local” and “fair trade” seem to have shared goals (robust economies, social equity, environmental and community health, etc.), so we are going to need policies and business models that favor both styles of “check-out activism” — not one at the expense of the other.
Local Fair Trade, for example, works “by applying the principles of Fair Trade to local food.” Nice enough. What about the inverse — applying principles of local food to Fair Trade? Direct Trade is close, bringing the intimacy and sense of responsibility of buying locally directly and fairly to the places that goods can actually grow (often without the CO2 benefits of sourcing locally, of course).
In the end, we have to understand what we’re getting into when we buy. There may be no truly guilt-free shopping. But the reasons we strive for a healthy “local-living” economy are just as applicable to people living in Mexico, Eastern Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. Likewise, fair trade and organic movements abroad can’t be ignored, for instance, here in the Pacific Northwest.
Says Mosely:
While the local food craze is all well and good, we should not be so quick to denounce organic and fair trade foods that are imported from the developing world. By shunning these products, we do not encourage local markets to flourish in these countries, but we condemn these farmers to the ills of conventional production for the global market (the only other real alternative at this time). We should remain open to such products in the short term, but also work for broad scale changes in the rules of the global market place to ensure that even conventional agricultural production is safe and fairly compensated.
(photo credits: Harry Wagner, hen power)
- Pay to Farm
I’ve worked on a farm for free before, but this is ingenious.
From Emily Biuso’s “Down on the Farm With Your Sleeves Rolled Up” in the New York Times:
The arrangement at Maverick Farms is simple: vacationers pay $120 a night to stay in a room in the hosts’ beautiful two-story, 125-year-old farmhouse, and they are also invited to work at harvesting, seeding and other chores. For each hour of labor, $7 is deducted from the bill. Up to 25 percent of the bill can be worked off. At night, the farmers cook dinner from food they grew, and the guests/laborers are encouraged to join them. At the end of the stay, visitors can, if they like, leave a donation for the food they’ve eaten.
(photo by author, Channel Rock, Cortes Island BC)
If people will pay for the experience of connecting to the source of their food (and I can think of many reason why this is a reasonable way to spend your money, if you have enough of it), what other experiences will they pay for? How about urban agritourism?
