It’s Called “Eco”, It Must Be Good
Posted in t-shirts, Eco Fashion, greenwashing on April 8th, 2008 by Administrator
Alternative Apparel today earns a dubious achievement award in the Shameless Greenwashing category today for their new “Eco-fill-in-the-blank” line. In general, despite being stupid-expensive, I am generally a moderately enthusiastic fan of Alternative because of their solid use of organic cotton, progressive styling, and the fact that they are not American Apparel. These latest additions to the “Alternative Earth” collection really strike me as more than a bit nefarious. The contents of most of the Eco-Heathers are 38% cotton (6.25% organic cotton), 50% poly (6.25% recycled), 12% rayon. Running those numbers through the bullshit calculator they look more like this: 13% genuinely environmentally progressive materials, 43.75% made from PETROLEUM, 31.25% conventional cotton (make your own judgement), and 12% heavily processed cellulose. Granted this is only my highly subjective opinion, but to me those numbers do not equate to an eco-friendly garment. Sure it’s commendable to use 13% less objectionable material, but it still seems to fall way short of the “part of the solution” threshold.
