The Marc Jacobs fashion show. Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA

The only place politics and fashion used to meet was on T-shirt slogans. But now the government is planning to take a more active role in your wardrobe.

I can exclusively reveal that tomorrow the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is using London Fashion Week as a launchpad for its new Sustainable Clothing Action Plan - not new regulations, but a series of green pledges from high street retailers.

Government departments don’t normally vie with the likes of Matthew Williamson on the catwalk. So this is new territory and conjures up disturbing visions of runway shows featuring ill-dressed ministers. But unless Lord Hunt, minister for sustainability, wears something truly spectacular, it’ll be a straightforward but significant announcement about government and industry working together to combat throwaway fashion.

The big deal is the calibre of high street signatories behind the plan, many of whom have come in for environmental criticism before:


• Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury have signed up to a range of actions to increase their ranges of Fair Trade and organic fashion, the take-back and recovery of unwanted clothing and supporting fibres and fabrics that enable clothing recycling.

• In addition, M&S and Tesco are supporting green clothing factories, animal welfare across their cotton supply chain and increasing consumer awareness on washing at 30C.

• Tesco is extending its traceability programme across cotton supply chains to ban cotton from countries known to use child labour. It’s also adding carbon labelling of Tesco laundry detergents.

• Nike will apply its Considered Design ethos to improve the sustainability performance and innovation of all its product ranges.


And then there are contributions from those who arguably were already leading the ethical space already:

• Adili and Continental Clothing: Continental Clothing has measured and reduced the carbon footprint of its clothing products. They are now working with sustainable online retailer Adili to promote carbon labelling to consumers.

• T Shirt and Sons - Already using organic cotton to manufacture their T-shirts, T Shirt and Sons is now developing the first Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified system for eco printing on organic cotton.

• Association of Charity Shops, Oxfam, Salvation Army Trading and Textile Recycling Association – will open more ’sustainable clothing’ boutiques of high-quality second-hand clothing and new sustainably-designed garments.

• The Fairtrade Foundation will increase the volume of Fair Trade cotton products, with a view to achieving least 10 per cent of Fair Trade cotton clothing in the UK by 2012.

• Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion – a centre to provide practical business support to the clothing sector on sustainability and fashion.

As one of the “stakeholders” who has been to some of the meetings to come up with this action plan, I’m heartened by a couple of points. At the first ever meeting I raised the question of cotton production and the use of child labour in Uzbekistan and Egypt being given “the brush off” by major retailers and players.

To paraphrase, the response was almost universally “dear girl, there is no way we can trace cotton from a global market and know whether child labour has been used.” I’m glad some retailers appear to have now found a way.

But will this action plan actually reverse, halt or slow down the problematic environmental footprint of our fast fashion binge culture that – lest we forget – means that the clothing and textiles sector in the UK alone produces around 3.1 million tonnes of CO2, two million tonnes ofwaste, and 70 million tonnes of waste water per year, with 1.5 million tonnes of unwanted clothing ultimately ending up in landfill?

And do these voluntary initiatives really address the evils lurking in the global fashion closet? Unless there’s a big surprise tomorrow, there is no mention here of a living wage or any commitment for overseas producers. They may not be fashionable concepts during a recession but it’s still a fact that in Bangladesh garment workers cannot afford to buy food thanks to the rise in commodity prices.

Finally, I’ve got between 5-7 minutes tomorrow with Lord Hunt, who is the face of the report (in the way that Kate Moss is the face of TopShop).

Got any short yet fashionable questions for him? Let me know below.

SOURCE: The Guardian 20/02/09 

This year’s launch event for Fairtrade Fortnight 2009 is this sunday 22nd February and aims to be an even bigger success than last year.  The launch party will include a number of fun activities for all the family to enjoy.

Including…

Races and games to win a Fairtrade chocolate medal  

Fairtrade smoothie making under your own pedal power

Enjoy free Fairtrade products throughout the day

Meet Fairtrade farmers and ask them questions about their farming methods 

Learn about the ethos of Fairtrade and much more! 

Location: Riverside walkway (by Gabriel’s Wharf) South Bank, London SE1 

Underground: Waterloo, Southwark, Blackfriars, Embankment.

More then 50 years after the FBI launched its ‘most wanted’ list, the USA’s Environmental Protection Agency has launched an eco-version - a list of 23 fugitives accused of everything from smuggling harmful chemicals to dumping toxic waste.  Follow this link to find who’s who!www.epa.gov/fugitives

One of Primark’s suppliers is under investigation for allegedly using illegal workers and paying staff less than the minimum wage.TNS Kitwear, which supplies 20,000 garments to Primark every week, has been accused of employing illegal immigrants from Inida, Pakistan and Afghanistan and paying its workers £3 per hour, just over half the minimum wage.  Staff also allegedly worked 12-hour days, seven days a week.

Primark has reported that it is one of the few companies defying the economic downturn, with this allegation brought to our attention it is clear why! 

‘Pants exposed: Know what’s in your knickers’ is a short film highlighting the main problems within the textiles and fashion industry. Made by sisters Jenny and Verity White, they write: ‘Morethanprettyknickers has one aim: to change the textiles industry for the better! We want to see standards raised at every level of production from growing to sewing, from cotton to bottom! We want to see fashion become a sustainable business driven by the demands of well informed shoppers who give a damn about where there stuff comes from. We have made a film with the intention of raising awareness: we believe that knowledge is power and that given the option consumers can and will change the face of the fashion. The humble pair of pants is our flagship garment, by finding out what it takes to make them we discover some uncomfortable facts about what goes in to our underwear…’ 

To see the film visit: http://www.morethanprettyknickers.com/ 

Source: The Soil Association  

David Hordle, Head of Plan A Delivery, Marks & Spencer talks to the Independent about the success of integrating the companies strategy ‘Plan A’ to reduce its carbon footprint.

April 2007, we put a Plan A Champion in every store – that’s 650 altogether. In addition to their day jobs, they help to spread the message across the store teams. One commitment is to make our offices carbon neutral by 2012. In terms of energy efficiency, one of the key drives is a 25 per cent reduction per square foot in store. So for two years we’ve run an energy-saving competition for the stores, as well as volunteer awards recognising people who go the extra mile.

A travel share scheme was launched last year, too, encouraging car pooling, using the train or walking to work. We also encouraged employees to reduce their carbon footprint by putting Plan A on their home page and linking up to a Carbon Calculator. Store teams can see how much energy they’ve used on an hourly basis.

We’ve opened three eco stores this year and are sharing that learning across the business, with employee engagement. Saving energy ticks the box for the environment, and it also ticks the box for finance too. We initially thought Plan A would cost money, but it’s cost neutral.

Source: The Independent  

The environmental priorities of the incoming American President couldn’t be more welcomed.  The end of 2008 saw him appoint two of the world’s most respected climate scientists, John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco to his team as scientific adviser and head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration respectively.  

They will join the incoming Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, who is another prominent advocate of the need to tackle climate change, and the Labour Secretary, Hilda Solis, who sponsored a Green Jobs Act in Congress last year.

But what will the new administration’s environmental orientation mean in practical terms?  Some expect Mr Obama’s anticipated fiscal stimulus package to include a heavy emphasis on creating new jobs, more observantly though he has unquestionably laid down a signal of intent: the struggle against runaway climate change will now enjoy the full-heated support of the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet.

According to our friends over at www.treehugger.com it was…

“Green has gone mainstream—there’s no doubt about that now.  Celebrities touting their ‘green’ lifestyles, corporations announcing “green” initiative after “green” initiative, and politicians publicly calling for “green” legislation and policies all relentlessly graced the airwaves and internet pages throughout 2008. But was last year the year when eco-verbiage finally came to be much too much?

According to the renowned word watchers at Lake Superior State University and the thousands of people who nominate their picks of overused and misused words each year, the answer is yes.”

Why not reduce the amount of plastic bags you pick up on your rounds this year whilst out christmas shopping and use one of Katharine Hamnett’s must have oversized organic cotton ‘Love’ shoppers.www.ethicalsuperstore.co.uk 

Lush, the beauty high street chain that prides itself on the use of natural ingredients and minimal packaging now promotes not using SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) in its solid shampoo’s! So why is sodium lauryl sulfate so dangerous? The sodium lauryl sulfate in our soaps is exactly the same as you would find in a car wash or even a garage, where it is used to degrease car engines. In the same way as it dissolves the grease on car engines, sodium lauryl sulfate also dissolves the oils on your skin, which in can cause a drying effect.  More worryingly once it has been absorbed, one of the main effects of SLS is to mimic the activity of the hormone Oestrogen and may be responsible for a variety of health problems from PMS, menopausal symptoms to dropping in male fertility and increasing female cancers such as breast cancers!