Panel & Audience Q&A

• Myriam Laroche, President, ECO Fashion Week Vancouver
• Summer Rayne Oakes, Source4Style
• Jeff Garner, Prophetik
• Paul Raybin, AirDye®
• Mark Trotzuk, Boardroom Eco Apparel
• Nicole Bridger
• Lindsay Coulter, David Suzuki’s Queen of Green

Q: Does the David Suzuki Foundation have any plans to launch a consumer awareness campaign on the impacts of the fashion industry? Similarly to the sustainable seafood initiative?

A: Not at this time, we are focusing on improving the policies of the beauty and cosmetics industry and informing consumers on the toxics and chemicals in their personal care products

Paul Raybin, Air Dye

Q: Can you tell me more about the air dyeing process and the benefits?

A: AirDye reduces water consumption by almost 95%. The conventional textile dyeing industry is a major contributor to water pollution worldwide, so Air Dye is focusing on improving this and providing the industry with a solution. They also have developed an inventory system, where they only make what is sold to reduce waste, water consumption and pollution

Mark Trotzuk, Boardroom Eco Apparel – commenting on the question

His company is a Bluesign brand member, so the manufacturing facilities adhere to the highest environmental standard for textiles in the world and are certified. Water, energy and carbon consumption is reduced.  His company works to reduce the environmental impacts at each stage of the garment life-cycle, but this is not easy. It is also expensive to have the facilities certified.

Myriam Laroche, President, Eco Fashion Week

Her biggest focus is on teaching consumers to reuse clothing and buy vintage/second-hand clothing. She has reduced her own impact by buying less, and she feels that consumers can all do their part by starting with buying one less item, or buying vintage clothing instead of new

Question from Nicole Bridger to Jeff Garner on how to inspire change in the industry

Jeff, there needs to be more awareness, he is working to inspire other designers through his own practices

Paul Raybin, Air Dye

Q: Do you have any samples of the air dye technology in use?

A: Designers can take the technology and imagine it in their own way. It is a way to reduce material use. You can take the fabric and turn it inside out, so designers can be innovative with how they use it

It is a way to reduce water consumption and pollution. With an example from China on the scope of the problem, 50% of China’s water supply is unsuitable for drinking AND 3.5 trillion gallons of water are polluted from dyeing. In conventional dying, water is used as a solvent to carry the dyes. For “Solution dyes”, the dye is injected into the fibre, to create prints, you need to weave fibres. With the air dye technology, you don’t make the fabric/product unless it is being consumed – this reduces pollution.

Q: Nicole asks Jeff about his work with natural dyes

A: Jeff Garner, Prophetik grows his own plants on his Tennessee farm. Japanese indigo is used to dye his fabric. This process is labour intensive

He has a team of two women who work specifically on the natural dyeing process. He also has a community garden where they grow the plants for the dyes

Q: How do you set the natural dyes so that they do not run and last a long time?

A: we use hemp fabric, so this absorbs the dyes well. We also use vinager to hold the dyes in place. But, each piece is unique and different because natural dying is not consistent and it is done by hand. Depending on the air temperature, and if it was dyed during winter or summer, the gradient also changes. This creates a story behind the garment that he can tell to his customers.

Q: Asked to the entire panel, do you encounter regulations and do you need to work with governments?

A: Summer Rayne Oaks, she is interested in finding local material sources and has also created a global network for fabric suppliers and designers (Source4Style). She is dealing with regulators for this initiative, because integrating the duty fees across boarders affects the prices of the materials. For example the price of organic cotton vs. silk from India is different, but they also have different duty fees. She is working with industry associations in the United States, who then liaise with governments on regulations and policies

A: Myriam Laroche, she is working with the regional government, Vancouver Economic Development Commission, they are a major supported, along with the City of Vancouver, for ECO Fashion Week.

-          SRO wanted to reach more people than possible through entomology so headed for fashion.

-          She headed a beauty shoot with a model and bees in order to highlight the plight of bees – 3 billion dead in the last four years.

-          Style, naturally – book by SRO. Talking about sustainability good but to get through to fashion, needs a whole infrastructure to support i.e. fabrics available, etc.

-          Case Study – Payless Shoes

-          Zoe & Zac $30 and less sustainable shoes. Using water based glues, organic cotton, recycled rubber and cardboard. Recycled packaging, sales of reusable bags with $1 per bag to planting trees in Brazilian forest; $1 per tree

-          Shipping by rail not air

-          Portico home

-          Products get ‘in’ i.e. pillow offers 20% more sleep, plus bonus environmentally friendly. Film campaigns make organic & natural etc.

-          Source4Style – ‘we source, you design’. Designers spend up to 85% of time sourcing. Market research on annual budget and yards purchased

-          B2B (business to business). Based online because not all designers make it to tradeshows. Images include close-ups etc. 30 suppliers, 1000+ materials. More coming.

-          Big brands are signed up ! Adidas, levis, sears, lululemon, MEC, Barneys NY etc

-          What is sustainable? Organic, recycled, biopolymer, process from farm to factory environmentally friendly, fair trade, fair labor, handmade, traditional,.

-          Sustainability is a moving target. Continued Improvement is required, full disclosure and transparency required. Ask the right questions to find out what’s really going on with factories etc.

-          Designers see source4style.com

-          Suppliers see source4style.com/suppliers

-          info@source4style.com

-          347.338.110

• Do you work with existing suppliers only or are you looking to expand?

-          Both. We’ve got the known ones and are open to developing newer ones. Consumer demand dictates this a lot.

• How does a eco friendly shoe for $30 not impact labour costs?

-          Payless shoes is 50 years old.  They have standards. Zoe & Zac has to be tame in terms of design in order to be able to sell and make money and keep design costs down.

• As a consumer, I was sceptical of Zoe & Zac being sustainable and ethical because it’s so cheap and sold at payless.

-          I wanted to work with companies who’re already trying to become environmentally responsible. Big companies who aren’t like that but are at least making an effort are worth helping.

• What do you see in the future?

-          More brands will be doing this. Eventually brands won’t say ‘green’ or ‘eco’, it’ll just be part of it.

• Do you have contact with fashion schools?

-          Once the website is up and running, this will be a good project. My book Style, naturally is used as a teaching aid and several universities have signed up.  Students are the future and so this is very important.

• Growing and processing, dyeing and then after sale care
• For example, Levi Strauss did a study that found that 919 gallons of water is used per pair of jeans – ie, flusing the toilet 575 times.
  • With this, Levi is starting to cut their water use in growing, dyeing and post consumer use.

-          Traditional dye Process:

• Water based dyeing + dye setting + hydro washing = textile + Water treatment
• Many of the chemicals used can never be removed from the water, making it unusable industrious water.
• It takes on average 125 to 250x the weight of the fabric worth of water to dye a garment.
• More than 3.5 trillion gallons used each year for dyeing. Enough to provide 111.4 billion days of water for the average urban dweller. And this pales in comparison to water needs for growing crops and post consumer use (ie, washing, drying)
• Aral Sea in Russia used to be world’s 4^th largest lake. Today it almost doesn’t exist due to water being diverted for use of the area to grow cotton. The water that remains is poisonous; the land left over is highly contaminated from heavy fertilization and over production.
• The textile industry is the 2^nd largest polluter in China
• Every year 1.5 million children under 5 die due to lack of clean drinking water. More than 1 Billion people do not have access to clean drinking water.
• Textile Industry Risks:
  • Rising costs. Right now water is heavily subsidized, particularly for business.
  • Resource allocation choices. For example, in California a few years ago water scarcity led to a choice that had many of the agricultural areas being deprived of water as urban dwellers were chosen to receive the scarce resources.
  • Government action
  • Business risk. In India Coke and Pepsi both temporarily lost their licenses to extract ground water due to overproduction. Communities boycotted the brands.

-          Industry Progress

• Conventional Methods:
  • Reverse osmosis
  • Reusing water – using the same water from batch to batch
  • Reduce dye liquor ratio
  • Recycled water – using industrial non-potable water
• Waterless Processes
  • AirDye – the protected technology of Colorep
  • DryDye (Yeg (spelling?) group out of Bangkok, using supercritical CO2 to transfer the dye into the fabric while capturing remaining dye and CO2 to be reused on future garments).

-          AirDye LCA (Life Cycle Assessment)

• Comparative LCA
  • ENEA: Toward Effluent Zero
    • 10 dyeing and printing plants in Europe that did a study on their environmental impact. This study was used by AirDye as a benchmark against which they could measure their own environmental impact, helping them complete their LCA.
• Their LCA was conducted by Five Winds International & PE Americas.

-          What can we all do:

• Leadership
• Raise Awareness
  • Consumer
  • Retailers (ie, Wal Mart and H&M making commitments to reducing their environmental impacts in China last week at Clinton Global Initiative)
  • Supply Chain – create a point of reference for consumers (such as Bluesign or a 3^rd party reviewed LCA)
• Ask Questions
  • LCA from your supply chain
• Demand improvements in farming and manufacturing
• Policy consideration – ie, is water a human right? How should it be priced?
  • We need to understand these initiatives and move towards them in our own ways.

Mark Trotzuk – Apparel Lifecycle Impacts & Mitigation of Impacts 

•  “Be careful with what you do, it’s very complicated once you start down this path” – MEC buyer on eco claims for his products. If you are going to be responsible for your product, you have to take all risks associated with every step of your product’s life cycle. 
• So where to start:
  • Choose a fiber.
    • Need to know every stage of its lifecycle (ie, later, how much energy will be required to upkeep it)
• You need to learn how to measure your impact. This is the most difficult thing to do in committing to eco.
• Recycled Polyester can save 40-70% in energy savings over virgin polyester. Even then, great amounts of energy are used in dying, drying and spinning product.
• 25% of chemicals used worldwide are used for textiles.
• Eco Apparel has adopted the Swiss Bluesign standard. Consumer Safety; Conserving Resources;  High tech and Comfort. That said, the challenge is that the standard is new and many textiles and supplies haven’t yet been approved.
  • The point with a standard is that ultimately you’re going by the word of your supplier and as much as they say it may be one thing, tests may reveal it’s another.
  • For example, 200 factories in Bangladesh were visited by Bluesign and found that only 3 of them had wastewater treatment plants. All the other 197 were allowing all chemicals used to just flush out into the water system.
  • As for social compliance (ie, working conditions), an audit of the highest integrity is most important.
  • To do a proper carbon footprint for your company you should consider:
    • Electricity
    • Heating
    • Transportation
      • Air travel
      • Commuting
      • Other
• Misc
  • Paper usage
  • Materials travel
• Amongst other factors
• Eco Apparel gives 1% to the planet because some things cannot me mitigated, such as travel for sales…
• Examples of material energy dependency:
  • Cotton needs to be washed hot and then cycle dried. A study in London suggests that 50% of the products environmental impact comes after the sale of the product
  • Polyester on the other hand can be washed cold and air dried.
  • Over the garment’s lifetime, polyester actually uses ½ the energy as cotton.
  • Approx 3000 recycling companies in North America – for example, collecting and then sending them to third world. 30% of the material is sold as wiping products for auto, cleaning and other industries. Old denim jeans are also being used for home and car insulation.
  • Reusing polyester can be closed loop because it can be recycled back into garments. The challenge is that polyester has a long life cycle so doesn’t come back to it’s starting point often.
  • The Eco Index: www.ecoindexbeta.org. It’s a new but complicated program that is being pioneered by the outdoor industry as an open source, transparent database to be used by industry and industry partners to help create an eco index. They are setting guidelines, indicators and metrics. They are asking every company to take one item from their portfolio and measure them against these metrics in the hope of coming up with a point system that can help rate “eco-index” for different products.
  • To wrap up:
    • There is no solution yet for how to measure a products lifecycle and its impact though it’s getting there. 

• WGSN predicts fashion internationally… based on their knowledge, Carly tells us about eco movements. Consumers are moving towards a eco friendly lifestyle – home grown food, sustainable power sources.
• WGSN think tank sees society having less of an identity now. Detroit is considering turning unused city lots into farmland.
• The majority of designers target 10% of richest consumers. Revolution is required to reach other 90%.
• Designers as activists.
• Zero waste designs cut from fabric using all of it; no waste. Recycled denim can be used as insulation in buildings.
• 2007 London – dissolvable dress showcased so no landfill destination.
• Denim dye process traditionally uses toxic chemicals, movement towards natural dyes, less harmful chemicals. Natural indigo and fruit dyes used for other fabrics.
• Many companies creating their own ‘green star’ system to monitor internal greening.
• True sustainability may be more about recycling synthetics, not using newly produced organic natural fibres. These wear better, wash easier.
• Bamboo fibres used in Japan. Decomposes harmlessly. Paper fibres used also for lace, knits, unique pressed fabrics.
• China will ban plastic bags handed out in stores June 2011.
• Mattel is producing eco accessories for Barbie. !
• Recycling used by artists, interior design, home fittings.
• Swaparama clothing swap parties popular. Repair also encouraged.  
• Bicycling communities popping up internationally. Underground communities hold repair workshops, portable sound systems for bike parties.
• George from California kayaks to work after years of traffic jams. WGSN asks, ‘Where does he put his coffee?!’