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. 

• Information gives the power to the people and that’s why we need to give tangible, communicable, understandable information to the people.
• In an Angus Reid poll ¾ of people in Canada believe climate change is occurring
  • 80% in BC
  • 83% in Quebec, tops in Canada
• 69% believe climate change is real science in Canada though in Alberta 21% believe it’s junk science.
• Problems for scientists:
  • Scientists are communicators spending a great deal of time communicating what they do in terms for those reporting what scientists are doing to the general population. Largely because science depends on assumptions that are not necessarily interesting to general public.
  • Sensationalism is used to sell and often jeopardize accuracy in so doing. For example, 150 meters sea rise would go to base of Statue of Liberty though magazines show covering of almost ¾ of statue (News of the World).
  • Journalists have difficulties determining who is and who is not an expert.
  • Journalistic ethical norm – journalist doesn’t want to be perceived as biased. IE) journalist asked to write an article about free trade agreement with China and must seek quotes and opinions from “experts” or “stakeholders” that then create a bias to the story. In order to balance this many journalists will use a “balance statement” that disproportionately affects the balance of the article. For example…. “some scientists believe that climate warming is just a normal cycle…” which effectively negates any evidence previously presented for the contrary, even if that evidence was much stronger in backing and numbers who support it.
    • Journalistic balance = inadvertent journalistic bias
• We know that the world has warmed by .7% over the last decade. We know that the world is warming. We know that 2010 is now the warmest year on record. We know a lot, scientifically speaking.
  • One theory against global warming is that it’s caused by Sun Spots, as featured in the movie, “The Climate Swindle” (name may be wrong).
    • With this theory they drew a conclusion seeing two patterns without actually proving correlation.
    • The challenge to these sceptics is that when you actually present all the relevant data, in a correlated fashion, the evidence of man-caused climate change becomes overwhelming.
• The canary in the coalmine: ice cap in the arctic.
  • In 2007 the previous record of meltback was beaten by an area the size of Ontario. It also beat the AVERAGE meltback by a size of Ontario and Quebec combined.
  • The reaction to this can be twofold:
    • A) let’s change our ways
    • B) let’s take advantage of this new access to oil and start drilling up in the arctic!
• Since the 1870’s scientists have been predicting climate change
  •  At this time, climate warming was thought to be a good thing (easier to farm year round…)
• 650,000 year record of C02, CH4, ice volume and inferred Antarctic temperature by studying ice cores in the Antarctic. You can literally infer past temperatures and past co2 levels from these ice cores.
  • We know this to be true for 800,000 years now
• Currently at 389 parts per million, far beyond anything humans have ever seen while on earth. On track to go from 389 to 1000ppm by 2100.
• So what’s going to happen?
  • First, make assumptions as did the IPCC on population, use of greenhouse gases…
  • IF we believe we don’t need to think about intergenerational equity then we’re fine. But if we do believe we have responsibilities to future generations then we have a lot to worry about.
  • 3 scenarios were looked at:
    • Best – increase of 1.8 degrees celcius by 2099
    • Worst – increase of 4 degrees celcius by 2099
  • The challenge with climate change is that governments are basing their strategies on the present (what’s going to get them reelected) so they have little impetus to work on long term problems, such as climate change.
• Precipitation
  • Impacts of climate change are disproportionately skewed to affect countries of the tropics, which also happens to be where we have less economically developed nations/peoples.
• Our big challenge:
  • Since 2005 (31%) people generally are growing more sceptical about if “global warming is taking place?” (48%) in 2010 in USA.
    • In the UK the public has become even more sceptical.
  • So why has this drop in belief taking place:
    • People are trying to knock down what the IPCC created, as is human nature to knock down what has become powerful.
    • Fear of government regulations. Libertarians that don’t want the government telling us what to do.
    • Fear of growth of uber government in Geneva. In other words, a central body dictating what’s happening in regional areas
    • Vested interests
    • Religious views
• Policy options: 2050 emission reduction targets
  • Copenhagen Accord: we don’t want to raise world temperatures by more than 2 degrees celcius even though that would mean that we’d have to reduce our global CO2 to neutral, or carbon neutrality.
  • Challenge with Coppenhagen Accord and similar such global accords is that language is always written to protect public policy, not necessarily truth. In the case of Coppenhagen, the language has been framed to allow for an ‘out’ such as Kyoto protocol stands for – from Canadian commitment of reduction of 6% in 1997 to allowing a growth of 2.5% in 2010 – an 8.5% shift by using public policy framing.
    • This hypocrisy is why we need to change the focus of climate change from federal to municipal.
• An exciting age of innovation
  • Science, engineering and technology will play a central role in the transformation of our energy system.
    • IE) The Chevy Volt – technology that existed but was suppressed because of vested interests
      • Cultures where new technology can step in without having to replace another technology is the easiest place for this to foster – hence why cell phones took off so quickly in the third world where landline infrastructure wasn’t established.
• “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?” – this is why our next generation will affect the greatest amount of change.  

1. People feel beaten up cause no one is listening. That said, Copenhagen was great because it featured the youth outside with the politicians inside, signifying just how out of touch the two sides are. To do more A) vote B) take steps in your own community and in your own life.

2)      Sapporo Berman statement that we’re within 3 years of a point of no return?

1. There is NO evidence that this is running away and can’t be caught. We have had much higher greenhouse gases previously on earth. The real question should be: “will we, as humans, be a part of the new world once these green house gases take their effect?” So you have to be careful with doom and gloom statements because it breeds a sense of hopelessness.
2. What she did for good was changing the activism mindset from fighting against something to fighting for something.

3)      1% of land for solar energy could take care of ALL our energy needs, is it really just vested interests stopping it?

1. The market is broken. The atmosphere is unregulated and people/business can put anything into it without recourse. This needs to change and then new innovations will take hold.
2. For example, tar sands in Canada act as a vested interest that prohibits government from focusing on new technologies.

4)      From fashion perspective, what this industry can do specifically to positively affect change?

1. Ask what were the tools/processes used to create those textiles? Ask the question “How can I reduce our carbon footprint” by using these materials? In other words, you just have to ask the questions every step of the way. Ask, ask, and ask.