TRAID Talk

First off, I've got to apologise because this is going to be a looong blog entry. I found this lecture so interesting I just couldn't stop taking notes!

TEXTILE RECYCLING FOR AID AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.

The aim of this campaign is to protect the environment by recycling, to aleviate poverty by funding projects across the world in countries that are still developing and also to educate the public of environmental and poverty issues.

Ethical fashion needs to exist as the fashion process as a whole is very unethical. From the extraction, to production, distribution, consumption and finally to the disposal.

We have to recycle our clothes as research from the USA said that 90% of clothes are wasted within 3 months of use. That's ridiculous! We all need to take Ecology, Economy and Equity into consideration when creating and using clothes.

Did you know that if the world consumed as much waste as the UK, we would need 3 earths to survive.

Basically, there is a conflict between what we are used to doing, such as throwing things we don't want anymore, and what we should be doing, like thinking of other things to do with clothes after we're done with them.

Some really interesting stories from this lecture I noted;

85% of water in Uzbekistan water in the sea was used to grow cotton, meaning desertification and huge drought for the people to live there. The sea levels literally disappeared, and the most awful thing about this is the fact that only a third of the water ever reached the cotton fields as they were using half-pipes to transport water, which meant a huge amount was lost before even reaching the fields.
In Mongolia, gotas have been raised as a resource for cashmere which has become a hugely popular wool in fashion. in 1949, there were 2.4m goats in Mongolia, and by 2004, because of huge demand, there were 25.8m goats. That a raise of over 10 times as many. This many goats needed feeding so they were fed seeds, which created less quality of cashmere. As food ran out, goats ate the grass on the fields. So many goats doing this created a great amount of desertification of Mongolia.

In Osaka, a man who used pesticides to grow cotton had put his work load on the roof after a long day out of the way of his 4 young children. Over night it rained, and the chemicals from the fabric dripped slightly onto vessels which the children used to eat and drink out of the next day. This tiny amount of the chemical swallowed by all 4 children ended them up in hospital, where all 4 children died. Chemicals are bad! We should stick with natural organic cotton growth with NO pesticides.

In LeSotho, many factories were created to give more jobs for the people living there. Some were fair trade factories which was good as everyone had better working conditions. However, some factories didn't maintain this standard. Unregulated rubbish tips opened at the same time as the factories where waste was set fire to. Children are seen running around these hugely dangerous pits for things to use for their homes. This leads to deaths, dangers and respiratory problems.Some campaigns and organisations which are trying to tackle some of these, ecology, economy and equity problems include;
- People Tree
- Organic Soil Association
- Pesticide Action Network
- Pants To Poverty
- FAIRTRADE
- Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops
- Ethical Trading Initiative
- War On Want