Do you know where your cloths come from?
Do you know where your cloths are made?
This wasn't what I wanted; however, I did find the answers interesting. I'm not sure what to do with this information but I'm going to share it. If anyone else would like to answer these questions please feel free to write a comment. This blog is open and even those of you who are not blogger members can post. :)
A few of the answers I got were as follows:
1 -- No, I don't know where my clothes come from. I just buy them without thinking about it.
2 - I don't know what they're made of, either, unless I'm looking for a particular fiber. I'm usually more concerned with fit than with fiber.
1-- I think about it sometimes. I'd like to do the work necessary to buy all fair trade or made in US clothing, but I'm afraid I generally don't. I'm a sucker for a good buy on cute clothes.
2-- I wear a lot of cotton, but I wear other kinds o fiber too. I usually take note of it before I wash it so I don't ruin it.
1- I'm a label reader and I notice that a lot of my clothes are made in China. I even got one from Indonesia. Rarely do I see a label that says "Made in the USA."
2- Most of my clothes are cotton, cotton blends. I have a few rayon dress shirts but mostly good 'ol cotton.
Now a few facts to go along with this. A lot of people think cotton when you say natural fiber. A lot of people just assume that buying cotton is better then anything else that is out there. After all it's natural, people have been wearing cotton for a long time. I read an ararticle last week while I was looking for information on rayon. The article happened to be about Hemp cloth, which isn't something I know a whole lot about (other then you can by this really fantastic hemp/silk blend of fabric on Dharma Trading Co. and I really want some. The hemp image was taken from, The Yarn Tree, Fiber, Hemp, Top)
You can read the article I was reading ("Sustainable Textiles urged at U.N. Conference," by PR Newswire, November 30, 2005.) It's fairly short and quiet interesting:
Did you know that in North America alone, that around 1.4 billion cotton t-shirts are sound ever year? Talk about another big number that's hard to comprehend. I don't know about you but it's hard for me to wrap my head around something like that. If you took 1.4 billion t-shirts out into a field and piled them all into one big pile how big do you think it would be? If someone who knows how to do things mathematically and wants to give it a shot, please do.
What does that big number of t-shirts sold in North American have to do with Hemp fabric? Well, if we stopped making things out of cotton--on a global scale--and started making it out of hemp instead. We would increase the yield, in essence we'd get more yardages out of a smaller area of land. By producing hemp instead of cotton we would free up an area of farmland nearly the size of the State of Florida (Florida is 2000 square miles. I found this from the Florida Quick Facts US Census Bureau, I never knew they kept all sorts of facts like that. It makes sense though I suppose, it does rather make feel slightly uncomfortable though.)
"With textile crops like Bamboo, Soy and Hemp, we have the ability to grow, harvest and produce textiles at a fraction of the environmental impact of traditional crops like cotton," said Hemptown CEO Jerry Kroll. "Pound for pound a crop like Hemp requires no pesticides, toxic fertilizers or fresh water irrigation and far less land and energy," (Article: Sustainable textiles urged at U.N. Confrence)
So there's a little bit of information. A sneak peak at what's hopefully to come in the future: Something more in depth on Bamboo as I've heard a number of different stories regarding the use of bamboo in textiles. I will look into that and see what I can find out. I'm also hoping to do a bit more looking into the history of hemp, other uses of hemp and so forth and so on.
Alrighty more about Hemp and Bamboo later. Have a good day. *disappears*
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