Eco-friendly clothing's been around for a while.
Comfy pants made from cotton that's grown without pesticides. Silk shirts made from silk from organically fed worms. Vegan "leather" shoes made of of pineapple leaves and apple peels. (This may sound like shoes Tarzan made for Jane and Boy, but this approach apparently exists. I saw it on PETA.)
But a lot of clothing is anything but eco-friendly. Cotton growing sucks up and spits out way too much water, not to mention relies on fertilizer that's the antithesis of eco-friendly. Then there are leather goods. Sure, the hides come from cattle that's being sacrificed on the altar of meat consumption, but it's pretty well known that cattle raising is an enviro-nightmare. Methane emissions, anyone?
Not to mention that those of us in the over-consumption world over-consume way too much clothing. Our closets are bulging, and even if we donate our wretched excess to charity, or throw it into the recycle bin, a ton of it ends up in landfill.
Cotton, to its credit, biodegrades pretty quickly. But leather can take well over 20 years to return to nature. And polyester? I know, I know, we don't wear polyester. But polyester may take 200 years to while away.
So the more environmentally conscious and responsible clothing brands are exploring more natural, sustainable ways to produce the inputs that go into the items we put on our backs and feet. For Adidas, that means using leather made of mushroom in its iconic Stan Smiths.
As I read in a New Yorker piece, some of these brands recently gathered in - where else? - Brooklyn to check out the state of the art for the eco-friendly material (and construction inputs, as well).
On display: algae inks, crustacean superglue, yarn derived from squid DNA. “Instead of making stuff from animals or petrochemicals, like fossil fuels, can we do it with biology? Can we design life itself to make the things around us?” a fashion designer named Suzanne Lee, who had convened the summit, called Biofabricate, asked. “Most people still don’t know that any of this is possible, because a lot of these products are not yet in stores. You know, your house actually isn’t grown . . . yet! ”
Lee is touting Namibian-mushroom waste. A colleague was pushing "bacterially grown brick." Which is I guess is what Lee's talking about when she says "your house actually isn't grown...yet."
Back to clothing, Lee's been at it a while.Twenty years ago, after working as a fashion designer for John Galliano, in London, Lee started using a modified kombucha recipe—“green tea, sugar, a few microbes, and a little time!”—to grow her own clothes.
(Hmmm. Maybe there's something I could do with the grocery store basil plant in the kitchen, the indestructible money plants that grace my fireplace.)
For all her efforts, nothing much happened at first, but nevertheless, Lee persisted. And now she's into bio-innovator summits.
One f the exhibitors in Brooklyn showed off a hoodie made "entirely of plant waste." The hoodie's tag read:
THIS HOODIE IS MADE FROM RESPONSIBLY SOURCED BAMBOO AND EUCALYPTUS, ORGANIC SEAWEED AND WILD HIMALAYAN NETTLE. THE FABRIC IS TREATED WITH NATURAL PEPPERMINT OIL TO KEEP IT FRESH, SAVING WATER, ENERGY AND TIME.I don't have all the ingredients around here, but I do believe I have some peppermint oil, which I assume is the same as PEPPERMINT OIL. I have it because, if you put some on cotton swabs and leave them in places that mice might frequent, the mice stay the f away. I deployed it in combo with chunks of Irish Spring soap to ward those little suckers off when I spotted one - and "eeked!" - in my den a couple of years ago. Did the trick.
I was disappointed to learn that Vi-Delta Emulsion, the liquid vitamins my mother spooned into our mouths each morning was made with fish oil, not castor oil. For a moment there I was imagining that, if only she'd known, my frugal and enterprising mother could have used it to make clothing for us!
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