Patagonia is known for making clothing that looks great but also performs to the highest standards in outdoors activities. The California brand is also about to be known for something a with much larger impact. Patagonia is going to be the first large-scale, international clothing brand that is Fair Trade-certified.
Starting in 2014, Patagonia will sell nine models that have been approved as Fair Trade. This means that every aspect of the product's manufacturing process—from growth of the materials to completion of the final product—will be done by people who have been adequately compensated for their services.
In a recent article by Triple Pundit, Cara Chacon, Director of Social and Environmental Responsibility for Patagonia, said, “We are also empowering the people purchasing our products. This effort is part of a larger strategy to raise awareness with our customers on how they can make a difference in the world with their purchasing decisions.”
Patagonia aims to show respect and transparency not only towards those who are making the goods, but the consumers who make the purchase. And the brand realizes that the consumer wants a product they're not going to feel like shit for purchasing and wearing.
Too many times, buying clothing comes with the mentality, "Out of sight, out of mind." But you'll now be able to wear your down jacket without a heavy conscience, knowing that everyone involved in the complex, global process of creating the garment is being compensated fairly.
Woohoochiii Clothing is a small progressive German company designing ski, snowboard, and skate related shirts that are made with organic fair-trade-certified cotton, are GOTS certified, and striving to be 100% climate(carbon)-neutral. Although the emissions occurring the printing process arent compensated for yet their main goal is to compensation for all their emissions as soon as possible.
Everyone needs to check out Grün [pronounced: grew-en; meaning: green, ecologist] an indy company run by a small group of snowboarders and skateboarders. They are a new eco-ethical board wear company doing way more than the majority of companies to ensure their products are 100% eco friendly and ethically produced. Grün takes the raw garments then prints them by hand using water based inks. Likewise they used organic hand loomed cotton for clothing labels, and even the hang tags are made from re-purposed cardboard. The extent of what they do to remain truly eco-ethical is far in excess of the half measures employed by the rest of the market. Below is a detailed look into Grün’s environmentally aware practices and eco credentials.
100% ORGANIC PRODUCTS
100% organic product, produced under the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and certified by Control Union and The Soil Association. The certification encompasses the farming, production and distribution, ensuring full traceability of every product. Grün's Earth-Positive based range is free from genetically modified organisms.
FAIR TRADE PRACTICES
Under the organic standard, farmers and agricultural workers are protected by stringent social criteria, total traceability across the entire supply chain, and also by the ban on the use of poisonous chemicals that can severely damage the health of farmers and their families. These standards also free poor farmers from third world debt to chemical companies on the ‘pesticide treadmill’.
JUSTICE FOR WORKERS
To help tackle the social injustice often seen in manufacturing, commonly known as sweatshop labour, Grün goes further, making transparent the manufacturing supply chain through an independent audit by the Fair Wear Foundation, which
promotes fair labour conditions in the clothing industry.
LOW CARBON
Made in manufacturing facilities in India powered by wind turbines, from low-impact organic cotton, and is distributed through carbon neutral warehouses and offices in that use only renewable green electricity.
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
Certified by the Oeko-Tex 100 Standard, Class I. The Oeko-Tex Standard is a guarantee of the safety of textiles and dyestuffs to human health and to the environment. It also means we take more care in adopting environmentally friendly production methods throughout the manufacturing process.
LOOK AFTER OUR WATER
The processing of the dye effluent takes place in a controlled closed-loop purification system that uses treatment ponds, sand filtration and reversed osmosis to convert the waste water into clean water.
LOW WATER FOOTPRINT
It can take more than 20,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of cotton, equivalent to a single T-shirt and a pair of jeans. That’s why we chose to work in a region that receives up to 95% of its water from the monsoon rain. This was an important consideration for us, as the monsoon rain reduces the need for large-scale irrigation projects normally associated with conventional cotton farming, which often deprive local villages of scarce water resources by draining lakes and rivers.
PICK YOUR COTTON CAREFULLY
We guarantee that we do not use cotton from Uzbekistan while the use of forced child labour is endemic. This follows the recommendations of the Environmental Justice Foundation's ‘Clean Cotton Campaign’. The complete traceability of certified organic cotton allows us to make this guarantee.
TRANSPORTATION
‘No Airfreight’ policy. We use containerized ocean shipping, thus the carbon footprint generated by transporting our apparel to Europe, Japan and the USA is negligible, more like a fingerprint, less than 1% of the total. We cannot solve the world’s transportation and energy security issues, but we can ensure that our own methods do nothing to contribute to environmental damage, social injustice or climate change.
HAND FINISHED
Finally we hand print all our tees using non-toxic, non-hazardous, water based eco inks. This means that any spillage can simply washed away, and misprints can easily be remedied without wastage.
Just as importantly it means our gear doesn't pump synthetics into the environment. The ink becomes part of the fabric as opposed to sitting on top of the fabric. The benefit of this is that water based inks will not crack or peel off over time as with PVC based inks that have a raised and rubbery or plastic feel to them.
