textile industry announces the sustainable apparel coalition
For those paying attention, it’s no secret that the textile industry is polluting the planet and sickening people. But that point is lost on most of us when we go to the mall. We don’t think about the Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani dye houses and textile processing plants that have polluted local waterways so much that miles and miles of rivers have died and the residents are dying or being crippled from the toxins by the tens of thousands.
Fortunately, a number of manufacturers, retailers, environmental groups, the U.S. government, and academics want consumers to understand the human and environmental impact of their next pair of jeans or new dress. As the New York Times pointed out today, a major effort is underway to make sustainability a reality for the apparel industry.
Building on the work done by Nike and the just announced Eco Index, a new group called the Sustainable Apparel Coalition “seeks to lead the industry toward a shared vision of sustainability built upon a common approach for measuring and evaluating apparel and footwear product sustainability performance that will spotlight priorities for action and opportunities for technological innovation.”
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s goal is to transform the apparel industry so that it does no unnecessary environmental harm and has a positive impact. The nature of the problem is so complex that no one organization can hope to come up with an industry-wide solution.
To make this happen, 33 companies and organizations, including Nike, Patagonia, Marks & Spencer, H&M, Levi Strauss, Nordstrom, Walmart, Duke University, and the Environmental Protection Agency, are creating an index which, as the New York Times puts it, “is meant to be a database of scores assigned to all the players in the life cycle of a garment—cotton growers, synthetic fabric makers, dye suppliers, textile mill owners, as well as packagers, shippers, retailers and consumers—based on a variety of social and environmental measures like water and land use, energy efficiency, waste production, chemical use, greenhouse gases and labor practices.”
While all this is yet another step in the right direction, what we can’t figure out is why there isn’t more pressure from consumers and governments to set tough standards that will stop the pollution that is killing people and causing other irreparable harm.
It wasn’t that long ago that Nike and other companies were boycotted for allowing their goods to be made by children. The brand damage was severe and long lasting. Even today, people touring the Nike campus sometimes jokingly ask where they keep the children. Viewed through the lens of western morality, we all consider the use of child labor to be a bad thing. However, unlike the children downstream of many dye and textile plants, those kids didn’t die.
Today, these same companies, and many others, are manufacturing products in factories that are killing people every day. Where’s the outrage and demand for change? Do we really value a cheap t-shirt more than the lives of Chinese villagers? Let’s hope the Sustainable Apparel Coalition can work quickly and move the textile industry in the right direction, for all our sakes.
This coalition is one of the most urgent & exciting news to come out .. committing to sustainability in the textile industry.
Let’s hope more & more will commit & sign up.