In one article, “Making Ripples,” author Amy DuFault explores the devastating affect the fashion industry has on the world’s water quality. DuFault interviews our own Paul Raybin, chief sustainability and marketing officer, and learns that there are solutions, such as AirDye’s waterless dye technology not only has major environmental benefits, but can make a difference to the bottom line for fashion designers in other ways too. As Raybin explains:

As we try to get more companies to adopt the technology, we try explaining to them that not only are there positive beneficial impacts for their brand, they actually reduce a lot of inventory risks. The environmental benefits are just the icing on the cake.

And just in case you’re wondering, all those great Costello Tagliapietra designs pictured in the article use AirDye fabrics.

In “Plastacular Recycled Polyester Fashion Comes of Age,” Aysia Wright adds plastic bottles to the mix of fashion and water. AirDye licensee A Lot To Say is mentioned for their fashion-forward, t-shirts, umbrellas, scarves, and other items which are all made from recycled PET and AirDye technology. A great example of how brands can combine sustainable products and technology to create fashionable and eco-friendly clothing.

Coco Eco is offering our readers a free one-year subscription. Just use promo code cocomraz. Nice!

high fashion and eco-friendly

First, let’s dispel the myth that eco-friendly shoes have to be ugly. Quite the opposite in fact. There are some selections that would make a fashionista clear out her closet. Shoemaker Terra Plana is offering up some hot heels made from vegetable tanned, non-toxic leather and a recycled memory foam lining. In addition to eco-friendly materials, these folks design the shoe to have as few pieces as possible, lightweight, and strong.

new shoes from old stuff

Old carpet padding, recycled bike inner tubes, and discarded water bottles are not what usually come to mind when you think about the materials in your shoes. But, if you’re wearing Simple Shoes, that’s just what’s between you and the street. These folks got their start in 1991. They were determined to counter the “over-hyped, over-marketed, and over-teched sneakers.” From their ethical supply chain guidelines, to their shoe boxes made from recycled paper, Simple Shoes has made it clear that they’re not green washing! And we love their tag line: Shoes for a happy planet. To the left is one of their men’s “vegan-friendly” offerings. The sneaker is made from certified organic cotton, the sole of the shoe is biodegradable, and they use water-based glue (instead of the petroleum-based glue most of the industry uses).

one shoe for me, one for you

If you haven’t heard of TOMS shoes, then perhaps you’ve been away to the jungles of Africa. Oh wait, they have TOMS shoes there too! These shoes are not only good for the planet (they are made of organic canvas and post consumer recycled plastics) but they are also great for humanity. For each shoe purchased, another TOMS gives away another pair.

big guys go green too

Of course, the big brands haven’t overlooked the chance to make some cash from eco-friendly shoe shoppers. Keds introduced their Green Label line made from organic cotton and recycled rubber last year. We’re guessing it’s not a hot seller since you can’t find it on their website unless you know what you’re looking for.

Timberland’s Earthkeepers shoes, sandals, even work boots are made from recycled PET linings, organic cotton, and leather from eco-friendly tanneries. What’s more, with their new Earthkeepers 2.0 collection, they’ve designed all the footwear to be easily disassembled and recycled when their worn out. For example, on this work boot, after you’re done with it, you’d return it to a Timberland store or mail it back to them. Then leather upper removed, cleaned and made into new footwear. In fact, 90 percent of the shoe will be recycled. Now that’s thinking things through.

wait, don’t toss those old shoes in the trash

If you’re like many American’s no doubt you have at least a few pairs of shoes that you’re not going to wear anymore. We’d like you to consider one of these shoe recycling options.

If the shoe is still good enough to wear, the best thing is to donate it to a good cause. For dress shoes, there are plenty of local organizations, such as Working Wardrobes in Southern California, collecting your old shoes. They clean them up and give them to someone who’s working on improving their life and trying to find a better job.

Other organizations collect shoes to give to the homeless, or ship them overseas to places like South America, Africa, and elsewhere. No doubt there’s a worthwhile group in your area that would love to take your usable shoes off your hands.

Of course, sometimes a shoe isn’t fit for anyone’s feet. Nike has an answer for that. Their Reuse-a-Shoe program has  recycled more than 25 million pairs of athletic shoes since 1990. At the recycling plant, old shoes become new athletic surfaces for running tracks, basketball court padding, or foam tops for tennis courts. The great thing is that they take all brands, not just their own.

sustainable materials

REI ecoSenstive Bike Jersey

Most of the major athletic apparel brands are taking steps towards sustainability. From using more organic cotton, to recycled plastic, to reducing toxins, the apparel industry is heading in the right direction, but it takes a bit of effort to find because the eco-friendly athletic wear is not yet widely available.

Fortunately, some athletic companies are making it easier for consumers to find the eco-friendly shoes and apparel.

REI created an ecoSenstive line. These shorts, tops, socks, and other items are made from sustainable sources. What we like is that for each of the types of source materials, REI describes both the benefits and the drawbacks. For example, for cotton, they explain that non-organic cotton, while only three percent of the world’s crops, uses 25 percent of the toxic chemical pesticides. While “organic cotton is renewable, biodegradable and non-toxic. The material is traceable through the supply chain.” Of course, organic cotton has its issues too. For example, supplies are limited, it’s more expensive to grow, it also uses a lot of land, which could be used to grow food instead.

Of the mainstream athletic brands, Patagonia might be the most progressive. They were well ahead of the competition when they using conventional cotton and began using only 100 percent organic cotton in 1996. Being green is not just a marketing message for them. Patagonia put it at the heart of their business. Their mission statement is “to build the best product and cause no unnecessary harm.”

Patagonia goes beyond eco-friendly production by thinking cradle-to-cradle for their products. When you buy items with a Common Threads tag, Patagonia wants them back when you’re done. They take worn out clothing and recycle them into new.

Nike has been getting quite a bit of play lately for their World Cup kits made from recycled plastic bottles. But they’re not the only ones using recycled polyester.  Most athletic apparel and shoes are not made from cotton, but man-made fibers which deliver the performance apparel that even the casual athlete wants.

One of the fastest growing performance apparel companies, Under Armour, is also getting on board with green fitness gear. Their UA Green collection is made with recycled plastic bottles. The line, while still limited, gives athletes all the benefits of advanced technical textiles (wicks away sweat, keeps you cool, offers UPF protection, and is light weight) with the advantage of being eco-friendly. According to their website, UA expects to convert over 1 million plastic bottles into athletic shirts and shorts.

To confirm the benefits of recycled plastic fabric, according to an Adidas’s life cycle assessment, they “discovered that depending on the method applied, savings of 40-85% on non-renewable energy use and global warming potential savings of 25-75% can be achieved” for recycled over virgin polyester. And to toot our own horn a bit, if these manufacturers would adopt AirDye technology, they would see even better sustainability results when it comes to creating a finished product.

consider green packaging too

The box your new shoes come in should also be a factor in the sustainability equation. While sometimes an empty shoebox can be handy, we use them to store paid bills at home, but overall, it’s basically something you’re going to discard right away. Fortunately, more and more athletic companies recognize this as well.

New Balance makes their boxes, shipping cartons, even the stuff to keep the toes molded from 100 percent recycled materials which can be recycled again. They also use non-toxic glue, ink, and varnish.

But PUMA has the best solution: Ditch the box altogether. They worked with FuseProject to create the “Clever Little Bag.” To us, this is one of those “why has’t anyone else thought of this” ideas. Eliminating the bag has no negative impact on the shoes and will save PUMA money, water, electricity, fuel, and tons of waste each year. According to their website, you’ll see the new packaging in 2011.

Clearly the move towards creating eco-friendly athletic gear is underway. After all, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to think that we only need to keep our bodies healthy–doesn’t the planet deserve the same treatment?
You can read more about each of these brand’s commitments to the environment at their websites:

• Adidas Sustainability
• Nike Responsibility
• New Balance Responsible Leadership
• Patagonia Enviromentalism
• PUMA Vision
• REI Stewardship

Is there another company whose line you think rocks in the green fitness category? We’d like to know who they are. Share comments below.

Just what is “refashion”? This term is springing up all over and means that people are taking their old clothes and remaking them, buying someone else’s “old fashions” and wearing them as is, or creating something completely new. Kinda like the hand-me-downs you might have worn as a kid, but much more fashionable and they actually fit.

You can see the movement spreading with eBay’s new recycled fashion site, over at etsy.com where everything is handmade, and niche sites such as Wardrobe Refashion.

Taking the refashion pledge takes more than just finding that barely used designer top at the thrift store. To be successful, you’ve got to have imagination and a great sewing machine.

Many re-fashionistas are creating entirely new pieces from old, tired items. Take the pair of jeans on the right. They get a new life as a clutch from the one of the talented seamstress who contributes to Wardrobe Refashion. What we love about this group is that members pledge to maintain a sustainable closet and promise not to buy anything new for two, four, or six months. But even this hardcore community knows one can fall off the wagon every now and then, so members are allowed to use a virtual “Get out of Refashionista Jail Free card” every two months.

Just about a month ago Sheena Matheiken wrapped up a year of wearing the same dress (well OK, seven dresses that were all exactly alike) each day for a year with her Uniform Project. Sheena challenged herself to living a year in sustainable fashion. With no small bit of creativity and a great eye for layering, Sheena seemed fresh and fashionable each day. She grew quite a following over the last year and turned her experience into a fund raising effort for school kids in India.

Now we have Marisa. Her pledge is in 365 days to make 365 articles of clothing on a budget of $365. Her blog New Dress A Day is great fun and inspirational. She’s taken some pretty crazy items from thrift stores and made shirts, dresses, and more that could easily be found on the racks at the mall. What do you think of this refashioned former monstrosity?

Clearly, one can have an eco-friendly closet and live stylishly with recycled fashion. But it sure helps to be handy with the sewing machine or have that great eye for just the right accessory that will make something old feel new again. I’m not sure how much hope there is for those of us who can’t thread a needle!

If you’re thinking about taking a trip to the thrift store here are some tips from Ecosalon to ensure your finds become awesome refashioned creations.

What are your suggestions for refashioning your wardrobe? Could you make a commitment not to buy anything new for an entire year?

This six month exhibit has more than 100 garments, accessories, and textiles from the 1800s through today. All of the items will demonstrate one of the exhibit’s six themes:

• the repurposing and recycling of materials
• material origins
• textile dyeing and production
• quality of craftsmanship
• labor practices
• the treatment of animals

Some of the pieces speak directly to the harm that’s been done by the textile industry. For example, two cotton dresses from the early 1800s “emphasize that cotton growing during this time drained soil of nutrients and depleted water supplies— environmental concerns magnified by the introduction of dangerous pesticides and chemical fertilizers in the 20th century.” And then there’s the green silk faille and chenille dress, circa 1865. The beautiful green color was achieved thanks to arsenic, a health risk to both the maker and wearer. Talk about dressed to kill!

On the other hand, as an example of eco-friendly textile dyeing, the exhibit features a dress from Costello Tagliapietra’s spring 2010 collection which makes use of our AirDye@ technology. The lush lava color is created using non-toxic dyes, no water, and all the printing materials are recycled.

If you don’t think you’ll make it to New York by November, Treehugger has a great slide show and we were there this morning and took some candid shots of our own.

The museum is located at Seventh Ave and 27 Street in New York. They are open Tuesday through Friday from noon until 8pm and on Saturdays from 10am to 5pm. Admission is free.

photo credit: The Museum at FIT

On the other side of the pond, the UK’s ASOS.com, the largest independent online fashion and beauty site in England, announced yesterday that they are launching an online marketplace giving their customers a place to recycled their fashions. The new site will also be open to small businesses and independent labels to promote their own products. You can expect to see some overstock items offered as well.

Nick Robertson, ASOS chief executive, told The Financial Times, “We have 7.5 million fashion-loving customers coming to the ASOS website every month and I want them to be able to recycle their wardrobes among each other.”

Like eBay, ASOS’s new site will focus offer both new, used, and vintage clothing. However, they are shying away from the auction model; items will be sold at a fixed price. ASOS also intends to help sellers make the most of the items by giving advise on how to display and describe pieces for sale.

The new online marketplace is expected to launch later this year.

Our staff happened by the New York H&M flagship store on 34th yesterday and snapped a few photos. We were also in San Francisco and the Union Square store’s windows were also bedecked in a similar fashion.

If you can’t wait to get to the store, here’s a tour of the new collection.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL-LeJAwOfM

Will you be stopping in H&M to grab some of the new “green” garbs?

This year IMG Fashion, the folks who put on the show, didn’t cut back on any of the traditions, but they did commission CarbonNeutral Company  to conduct a carbon footprint audit. Turns out the show produces just under 1,000 tons of carbon emissions.

To offset all that greenhouse gas, IMG has made some on-site changes, such as recycling and using paper water “bottles.” But the bulk of the effort to bring the show to net-zero emissions is from sponsors Tetra Pak and O.N.E. Natural Experience. For example, Tetra Pak is underwriting two projects: a forestry management effort in the Big River/Salmon Creeks Forest in Mendocino, Calif. and the sustainable sourcing of local natural gas at two dairy farms in Idaho.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Fern Mallis, IMG Fashion senior vice president, said, “I think it’s exciting to think that our runways and lights and shows are lighting up a dairy farm in Idaho….It is the socially and politically conscious thing to do.”

photo credit: Lanterna / flickr

Of course, we’ve just got to share a few shots from the show, which unfortunately don’t do justice to what Style.com calls “their beautiful palette of desert-sunset hues.” Nor can you see how the duo plays up contrasts in the back of a piece, but we hope you’re as impressed with the collection as we are.

(photos from Coutorture/Getty)

So, now that you’ve seen some of the collection, here’s what a few of the fashionistas who were at the show said:

Women’s Wear Daily:

Going green never looked so chic, as Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra presented a collection of their signature softly draped and pleated jersey dresses and separates in a dusty palette colored by AirDye, a sustainable dyeing method.

Style.com’s Meenal Minstry:

Spiraled and compressed folds added substance and weight to one look’s waist, while on another the pleats seemed almost spontaneously draped around the body. The designers tried out an interesting new technique on their signature jersey dresses and tops, anchoring them with woven silk backs, usually in a contrasting color plucked from their beautiful palette of desert-sunset hues. But for all that, there was actually a gorgeous simplicity to this collection. It marked both a return to their founding vision and a step forward.

NBC New York’s Catherine Blair Pfander on The Thread:

Conceived in a sophisticated palette of rosy browns, golds, and a multi-colored circle print called “Ghosts” (developed by AirDye, which developed a technique of dying fabric without water), the collection was composed primarily of draped dresses and skirt-n-top sets, with a few metallic pants thrown into the mix.  We were digging the “secretarial geisha” vibe, driven home by messy top knots and orangey-red lips.

“The storyline is of this young girl embarking on her life, taking that trans-Siberian train from Russia to Japan.  It’s a young, hopeful attitude,” says Robert.

The clothes did feel youthful–and the styling cast a charming, naive glow to the collection–but off the runway, we think this will prove an utterly ageless collection, with pieces that mothers and daughters will swap.  These are clothes to make women feel beautiful and intelligent. Honestly, who wants to feel any other way?

Second City Style, blogger Carol Calacci:

You have to marvel at how these two burly bears could be the designers of such modern, clean, soft and elegant pieces for women. The intricate gathering, weaving and perfect draping included a lot emphasis on the backs of the dresses this season, which unfortunately you cannot see from the runway shots….I especially like their use of two tones together, which seems to be one of their trademarks, for example the whole back of a dress may be a darker tone of the front.

Ana Louisa on the Grown-Up Shoes blog:

This may strike you as strange while you scroll down this page (of photos): nothing dramatic is happening here. Nothing crazy or mind blowing. But to me, this show is perfection. The simplicity of it, the gorgeous draping, the simple but flattering cuts and shapes are utterly delightful. The prints are incredible but even the solid colors are gorgeous.

What do you think, are these pieces you’d wear? And is sustainability ever going to have a larger role in the fashion world?

As you can imagine, this “reality-like” show’s stars are primarily pampered middle-class westerners who quickly breakdown–even after just a few hours in a high-end textile factory. The six live with local workers, spend up to a week working just as the Indians do and immediately see how good they have it back home.

While the drama leaves a bit to be desired, in our opinion, the message that this series is attempting to highlight is important. One of the Londoners, Georgina says early on, “I just love the fact that you can buy something really, really cheap wear it once and chuck it away.” As a matter of comparison, clothing uses less of our income now than it ever did. In order for the West to have “disposable” garments, the people who grow, weave, and make our clothes live and work in often unbearable conditions.

The 4,000 workers in the first factory the show visits make little more than $2.00 a day. And that’s for the coveted spot on the sewing floor. The team is trained and tested to see if they can make the grade to sew shirts, and it turns out the work is not so easy. Three of them find out that they can’t even keep up with the quotas for ironing and buttoning. While the Brits are at this factory, they earn only as much as the Indians do. When they collect their paychecks, of a few hundred rupees, and go shopping, they quickly discover that a tube of deodorant costs more than a day’s wages. Not exactly what they’re used to back home.

From the factory that pumps out 10,000 garments each day, the six journey to a family owned operation where there are only a handful of employees and produce discount clothing destined for Western stores. Here they are asked to each make six garments from start to finish each day–well beyond their sewing and productivity skill level. To top it off, they get paid by the piece and sleep with the rest of the workers under the sewing tables. We think you can guess how well this went over with the group.

As we watch the group in the premier they are certainly getting a sense of the human costs of cheap textiles. But we have a feeling things are going to get much worse. In future episodes the six Brits will pick cotton, accompany a labor inspector searching for kids working in factories, and follow the entire supply textile supply chain.

We wonder if they’ll make it to the dye factories that pump out millions of gallons of toxic water or if they’ll be exposed to the massive amounts of pesticides used on the cotton crops?

Even as we watch these spoiled “kids” cry, giggle, and whine their way through the harsh realities of India’s textile industry, perhaps we should all take the core message to heart: the textile industry takes a toll on the people, water, and land involved in putting giving us those $5.00 tees.