42 replies to this topic

[amylisa1127]

I find Eco-friendly facinating! You can buy a recycled handbag made from tires, or an organic blanket. There are so many great clothing and accessory options out there. I don't know about you all, but the area I live in does not offer many of these options for clothing so I have to drive or order them on-line. My favorite store online is whiteapricot.com. Any of you opt for green clothing?

[kathie_san]

There are lots of recycled handbags in my place and they look really nice. There are also charitable institutions making recycled accessories out of magazines and other stuff. Though I have not seen clothes that are made of recycled materials yet. I'm kinda curious how it looks like and what are they made of.

[mommymumbles]

I saw a picture of a kids play yard made out of recycled tires once! It was pretty amazing - had climbing parts and a tunnel too. I am not sure if tires are safe for kids though. Is the material they make the tires from safe for little hands and mouths? It was cool to look at though.

It is always fascinating to see what ingenious minds can come up with when it comes to recycling and re-using materials!

[Green Olive]

I do not have any local eco-friendly clothing stores, either. Thanks, for that link, because I did not know where to start looking. My sister was telling me about a bio-degradable shoe. She said it was only available in the UK, and it looked super comfy. Anyone happen to know about a bio-degradable shoe?

[Monkey Doctor]

I know there is still a bit of a taboo about this but wherever possible I buy second hand clothes. this isn't because I am poor, it is because I think that we live in a culture where clothes in particular are seen as disposable items when they are most definately not disposable. I give my clothes to charity and wouldn't look down my nose on somebody who bought my clothes. This is becoming more fashionable though and the prices of second hand clothes has shot up in the last few years.

[zararina]

There are also a lot of handicrafts here that are made from recycled materials such as bags, purses and decors. Usually those items are can be easily found even in a department store or in souvenir shops in the area. There are also some items like sandals that are made from natural or always no use plants like water hyacinths that causes clogged area in some river banks here in our country.

In terms of eco friendly clothing, only few fashion artist are making use of recycle materials and some of their pieces are expensive. I remember Michael Cinco, a Filipino fashion designer whos creations are featured in one of the episodes in America's Next Top Model. His gown collection shown there are made from plastic garbage and some other waste materials.

[Don]

Does eco-friendly count if you shop at Goodwill? I've been finding great deals on my blue jeans at Goodwill the last few years. Seems that they're already produced, I'll wear them till their rags, and it doesn't necessarily add to the corporate demand for the product. Sounds eco to me!

[Mon-Jes]

Yeah, I would think shopping at Goodwill would count as eco-friendly.

Well, the only eco-friendly clothes I've seen other than general second-hand stuff were either very expensive clothes at Whole Foods -- they looked nice, but the price was an eye-opener -- or cheaper clothes at a store in Austin many years ago. Those were pretty much shapeless cotton dresses. I wonder how possible it is to find distributors for eco-friendly bulk cloth. I'm about ready to give up on clothes shopping and learn to make my own because the sizing is driving me nuts.

[marale60]

If you want to be eco-friendly with clothing then the only real solution is to wear your clothes longer and buy used clothes that people don't want anymore. Goodwill and other charity centers are perfect for that, except people don't want to wear someone else's clothes. I read somewhere that one cotton t-shirt uses over 2000 gallons of clean water to produce. I am disgusted when I see the wholesale stuff at Marshalls and `Ross because that stuff encourages consumption and is killing the Earth.

[Mon-Jes]

Well, there's really no way to have a clothing store without mass displays. Even those shapeless cotton dresses were on racks with several copies of each dress. I mean, I'm not quite sure how you would go about reducing consumerism this way (I'm not trying to poke fun at you or be nasty -- this is just something that occurred to me while reading your post). Everyone has different tastes and different clothing sizes, so unless you decreed everyone wear the same thing, you're going to see lots of clothing in clothing stores. You can't really tell someone they can't design more clothes because there are already enough, and you can't really tell someone they can produce only x pieces of clothing if the clothing is popular....

Again, I'm not trying to be nasty. It's just that I hear people say how they dislike consumption, but they don't offer ideas for reducing it short of everyone following that person's decisions about what's too much consumption actually is.

I hope that made sense. Again, I'm not trying to argue with you, just point out something I thought of....

[jasserEnv]

While some people may choose to wear used clothing and not be concerned about style, I think that removing the urge to get some nice new clothing is a very difficult challenge. I think that an alternative approach is to promote fabric recycling instead of excessive donations to the poor. Sadly, the clothes that we donate in the 1st world often goes to 3rd world countries resulting in the people there abandoning much of their traditional apparel and subsequently causing local clothing suppliers to go out of business. In effect, we are dumping our garbage in their countries rather than dealing with it ourselves. To that end, there is a small clothing company that is buying back the clothes from 3rd world countries, adding information about the route it traveled and selling it back to the first world. This raises the awareness of the problem and gets money into these countries.

All that aside, many of our closets are full of clothing that we will never wear again but is not thrown out because we don't want to generate waste. If we could recycle the clothing, we could reduce the need to grow water intensive crops like cotton. We could also reduce the amount of plastic consumed for artificial fabrics. Just by providing people an outlet, we would have an abundance of material to reuse numerous times instead of sending the clothing to the third world or to a landfill.

[pwcross]

Do you have a farmer's market in your area? I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, which I'm lucky to say is very green-conscious, so you basically can't go anywhere without finding recycled products. The larger farmer's markets around here always have vendors selling eco-friendly fashion and accessories.

My favorite avenue to dressing green is sewing my own clothes! I love going to thrift stores and finding magnificent fabrics that I can tear down and recreate into something that is not only eco-friendly, but also fashion-forward. I've turned old bedsheets into formal dresses, old men's shirts into handbags, you name it!

[jliles6]

My favorite way to get clothing while keeping the environment in mind is thrift shopping, I must admit. I can't afford organic clothing, usually, but thrift stores at least are not contributing to producing more waste and pollution. Or, at least, less of it than new retailers. I also strongly believe that repairing and fixing your existing clothing is a big help, too. Instead of having to get rid of something with a hole, you can sew it up and continue to use it.

[jasserEnv]

jliles6, on 12 November 2011 - 02:39 PM, said:

My favorite way to get clothing while keeping the environment in mind is thrift shopping, I must admit. I can't afford organic clothing, usually, but thrift stores at least are not contributing to producing more waste and pollution. Or, at least, less of it than new retailers. I also strongly believe that repairing and fixing your existing clothing is a big help, too. Instead of having to get rid of something with a hole, you can sew it up and continue to use it.

To your point, buying good quality clothing is part of this. Instead of buying poor clothing that will be out of fashion next year or will be coming apart, it is better to focus on well-tailored clothing that will last a while and can be repaired. For me, I have found this to be especially true with shoes. Rather than buying shoes that are glued together, I get ones that are sewn.

A case in point is that I have some relatively inexpensive partially hand-made shoes from Portugal that I have now had repaired 3 times. I won't be getting them repaired again as the leather is starting to fall apart but they have been very comfortable and because they were sewn together, when they started to come apart, they could be easily fixed. I compare this to a pair of shoes from China where the glue failed and my entire sole just fell off while I was walking. Interestingly enough, the price of the shoes was only $20 different.

[Germs]

Personally i don't own any eco friendly clothing, other than bags but i hardly consider those clothing.

[karmaman]

Most of my clothing is pretty eco-friendly because it's mostly from thrift stores. We have a lot of thrift stores where people drop off pretty high quality stuff, so for the same cost as a cheap new t-shirt that would fall apart in a month I can get a brand name shirt that lasts years. We also have outlet retails like Beall's that sell whatever didn't do well at the original retailer for a big discount.

[SpiroFlo]

Ain't nothing more green than naked.

Of course, it's also illegal most of the time, so you have to compromise somewhere...

[Joe Parker]

Environmental pollution is a big issue world over. Use of organic clothing is one big way to decrease the use of pesticides and harmful chemicals.With pollution making lives miserable, it is the need of the moment.

[magickat]

I think stores are gradually bringing in more eco-friendly clothes, particularly as more designers are now looking down this particular route. As with other green initiatives it is perhaps the greater expense which is offputting for both manufacturers and consumers, although this may reduce in time.

[thordylan]

Do you consider disposable underwear as eco-friendly?