We talk a lot about sustainably sourced textiles, eco-friendly dye techniques, water and energy conservation, but probably not enough about the responsibility we have to ensure the textile and garment workers around the world are being treated with respect.

There was some buzz earlier this year when BBC produced Blood, Sweat & T-shirts. It’s been a while since we’ve heard of calls for Wal-Mart or Cathy Lee Gifford to close down sweatshops with unethical or dangerous practices. But that doesn’t mean that the world’s textile industry has cleaned up its act.

In fact, at this very moment garment workers in Bangladesh are on strike and staging large protests. In mid-July a massive general strike even closed down Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. We’re just not hearing much about it in the mainstream news sources.

The primary issue for the Bangladeshi textile workers is fair wages. According to the Financial Times, Bangladesh has the lowest paid workers in the world. The average worker in one of the many ready-to-wear textile factories earns only $25 a month, or 1,887 takas (the local currency). Just to survive, one needs at least 8,000 takas a month. The workers have not had a pay raise since 2004, while the cost of food has risen more than 30 percent during the same period.

After a month of protest, so far all the workers have been able to get is a commitment for a 3,000 takas a month. Still far below what’s needed to sustain a family.

Garment exports account for about 80 percent of Bangladesh’s exports and employ some 3.5 million workers. Yet, the government isn’t supporting ethical labor practices for the workers. In fact, the police have brutally cracked down on the strikers and protestors. Thousands have been arrested and others beaten.

Given the low wages and long hours prevalent throughout the garment industry, no doubt we’ll see more protests like these and some that were held in China earlier this year.

As consumers, we can’t forget that as we choose clothing, linen, and other textiles made from sustainable sources, that the people who made them for us deserve to be treated ethically as well. Of course, that may mean the end of the $5.00 t-shirt, but isn’t it worth it?

Nothing Is What It Seems won Calib Hill the $4,500 first prize in Levi’s “Care to Air” design challenge yesterday. The contest began in June and received at least 1,400 entries. The goal was to inspire people to create sustainable, atheistically pleasing, and effective ways for people in all communities to line dry their clothes.

Calib’s design appears to be a framed piece of art hanging on the wall. But, nothing is what it seems. The piece quickly converts from something pretty to look at, to a clothes line ready for a full load of laundry. It’s great for tight spaces or if you simply don’t want to have an ugly clothes rack hanging out in your room. Calib even thought about a variety of covers, from a great piece of art, to a white board, or anything else you’d like to look at.

The second prize design had a similar, wall-mounted idea. Jeff Munie and Marlowe Baca created an Evaporation Station. It’s made to be attractive and flat mounted or on a tension pole. They also designed it to be made from recycled from stainless steel, which makes it ready for recycled once again. Jeff and Marlowe dont’ want you to hide the dryer, in fact they want you to “proudly mount this on your wall.”

We think this is a great way to eliminate the cost and energy use of drying clothes. Which, as we’d like to remind you, accounts for 60 percent of the climate impact of your clothing. And that includes the manufacturing process.

Are you ready to step away from the dryer and start hanging your laundry? Perhaps one of these great ideas will finally win you over. Post a photo of your clothes line on our Facebook page and tell everyone you’re proud to line dry!

The eighth season of Project Runway has just gotten underway. Making some waves this go around is Gretchen Jones, a green clothing designer from Portland, Oregon.

You may recall that back in season five, eco-fashionista Leanne Marshall was crowned queen of the catwalk. After the show, Leanne has continued to work as a eco-fashion designers. From what we could find, Leanne’s making handmade dresses and selling them on Etsy, but her garments haven’t exactly changed the fashion world.

This season, the new green diva is taking the show by storm (if you count winning the first two challenges as a storm).  The biggest coup was winning the second challenge that resulted in Grechen’s jumpsuit being featured on a larger-than-life Coco Rocha in a Marie Claire ad in Times Square.

Gretchen’s goal is to create clothing that is “unique, but playful, friendly, and accessible…Hip to trend without playing on that.” In the two designs we’ve seen so far, it’s easy to see that Grechen looks to 1970′s bohemian lifestyle for her inspiration. We particularly loved it when she said during the show that she wants to create an “amazing brand that happens to be green.”

Gretchen’s been focused on eco-friendly fashion for some time. At her online store Mothlove.com, Gretchen explains that she “aims to create collections that beg to be worn and fallen in love with…” She also makes every effort to use local, sustainable fabrics such as organic cottons, silk, bamboo, along with using natural dye processes.

We’re eager to see if she can bring any of her sustainable fashion sense into her designs for Project Runway. It would be nice to see them have an episode focused on eco-fashion that’s a little more practical than the burlap sacks from season seven.

And just a thought, we’ve started working with Parsons The New School for Design for their senior project for this coming school year; perhaps when Project Runway gets to the episode where the designers create their own fabric designs, they’ll come to AirDye to make their vision come alive with our eco-friendly technology?

photo credits: coco rocha and mylifetime.com

We love Twitter. Contrary to popular belief, most of the tweets aren’t about what someone is having for lunch or that they stubbed their toe on the way to the water cooler. In fact, we’ve met some pretty cool, eco-friendly people there and wanted to share our favorite eco-fashion micro-bloggers with you.

1. AmyTropolis: The fashion editor for EcoSalon, tweets not only about eco-friendly fashion, but offers her followers tips on other sustainable issues too. As a bonus we love her Twitter background.
2. BaharShahpar: A designer of green fashion for years. Bahar has been profiled in ELLE, NYLON, Womens Wear Daily and other magazines for her locally produced, eco-friendly clothing. Clearly she’s a leader in sustainable design.
3. CocoEcoMagazine: This online eco-chic magazine covers all facets of sustainable fashion, beauty, celebrities, and culture. And too toot our own horn, they covered AirDye technology in their most recent edition. Hey, we’re all about sustainable fashion too!
4. DianeMacEachern: A long-time environmentalist who encourages consumers, especially women, to create a greener world by choosing eco-friendly products. And we know we all have a long way to go when it comes to having real choice at reasonable prices for green fashion.
5. Ecochickie: Starre Vartan also writes for the Huffington Post about green living. Not all her tweets are about fashion, but they’re always interesting and have a green twist.
6. EcoFashionista: Kelly Drennan was one of the first people we found when we began tweeting over a year ago. Kelly’s a great resource and great voice for eco-friendly fashion. We’d also like to congratulate her on  her appointment to the Green Advisory Board Member for EcoFashionWeek in B.C.
7. EcoFashionWorld: Here you’ll find great, green fashion trends from around the globe. Well, OK mostly from the U.S. and Canada, but we’re sure they’ll branch out.
8. Ecouterre: An online magazine about the future of sustainable fashion. Their tweets often have a bit of humor, which is always welcome in our book.
9. EthicalStyle: Not much for conversation, but you’ll find plenty of links to their blog articles about the latest happenings in eco-fashion.
10. FashionMeGreen: While just getting started, we’re really enjoying the links behind this Twitter stream. As they say, this is “where style goes green.”



11. GreenByDesign: If there’s only room for one eco-freindly fashion source on your Twitter feed, then it should be GreenByDesign. A rich source of great stories and conversation. Unlike so many other large blogs, the tweeple behind Green By Design’s Twitter feed actually interact online. Nice.
12. GretaEagan: This woman gets around and shares her fashion insights as well as a bit of herself. Don’t know about you, but we think Greta has just the right mix of personal and professional tweets. And she seems to be a wonder at finding thrift store treasures.



13. UniformProject: Last year Sheena proved to the world that you can wear one dress every day and still be the picture of style. Not only did Sheena keep us all updated on what she was wearing, but used Twitter and other social media to increase awareness and raise over $100,000 for a good cause–schools for kids in India. Year two kicked off on August 1. You won’t want to miss any of the UP’s tweets.

Of course, we also want to recognize the green fashion retailers. Here’s a list of the ones we follow on Twitter:

• A Lot To Say is online*
• CargoRoyale in Vancouver
• ChooseSpun in Mercer Island, Washington
• CounterCouture in Minneapolis
• EcologiqueSD in San Diego
• InterfaceFLOR is online, and OK, not exactly fashion, but makes our homes more fashionable and greener too.
• JulieApple is online*
• looptworks in Portland, Oregon
• RESTORE_NYC in New York City

Just a bit of full disclosure: A Lot To Say and JulieApple both use AirDye technology. Hopefully more on this list will be soon too!

No doubt we’ve missed oddles of Tweeting greenies. Who are your favorite eco-fashion people and brands on Twitter? We’d love to know so we can add them to our eco fashion and design Twitter list.

Don’t forget to follow us too!

This month the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published a report which clearly shows extreme water shortages are likely to occur by mid-century in the United States. The report finds that every state in the lower 48 is at risk for water scarcity and the Great Plains and Southwest are likely to face extremely high water shortages.

Researchers at Tetra Tech, a consulting firm used by the federal government and many major corporations, took a look at projected water demands along with renewable water supplies. They calculated what would happen to water supplies under 16 different leading climate models. What they found is that water supplies will dwindle and demand for fresh water will increase.

On the supply side, climate models forecast that many parts of the country will not only have less rainfall, but more of what does make it to the ground from snow or rain will be lost to evapotranspiration (water lost to evaporation and vegetation transpiration). As temperatures rise due to climate change, east Texas, the California Central Valley and the Southeastern states could see five fewer inches of available precipitation each year–what’s left after evapotranspiration. Leaving them even drier than they have been in recent years.

While we’re seeing less water enter the system, we’ll be taking more water withdrawals from aquifers, dams, rivers, and lakes. According to the study, water use in the U.S. is expected to increase by 12.3 percent between 2000 and 2050. The primary uses of fresh water are for agriculture, power plant cooling, and domestic use.

The regions expecting the worst water shortages are already using more water than they receive in rainfall each year. For example, California, the Southwest, and Texas already have water withdrawals over 100 percent of annual rainfall. This means those states use more water than they have.

Another point that needs to be made is that the hardest hit states are also where we grow much of the nation’s fruit, vegetables, and cotton. On the map below, you can see by the dark red colors the counties most at risk for extreme water shortages. The white dots show where the majority of the cotton is grown in the U.S.

While American cotton farmers are methods that put cotton’s water consumption in line with other crops, we may have to choose one day that it’s more important to have food than cotton (as there are other choices for textile fibers). But we won’t be able to rely on other countries to take up the slack and grow our cotton for us.

The top five cotton-producing nations are: China, U.S., India, Pakistan, and Brazil. Together these countries produce almost 84 percent of the global cotton crops. And, with the exception of Brazil, these same nations are also looking at severe water shortages in the short and long term.

Clearly much needs to be done to ensure we’re using water wisely. Conservation methods need to improve, legislation to slow down and reverse climate change is required, and we may have to decide if we want to grow cotton for t-shirts, or food for our tables.

What do you make of the new study and do you think we’ll have to face the day when cotton jeans, linens, and t-shirts are only for the wealthy? Post your thoughts below; we’re interested in what you have to say on this subject.

image credit: Google Earth / NRDC