Fashion always changes trends and colors and most of us follow it up. So, with the ‘go green’ trend coming in, several local, national and international brands of eco-labels are available, of which very few truly deserve an ‘eco’ tag. A product is considered ‘green’ only when it has all aspects like collection, transportation, production, manufacture and marketing under the ‘green’ tag, and not only because it has been derived from an organic or natural source.
Corruption is rampant in the textile industry too – not only in terms of purity of material, but also in terms of the quality of work done or delegated to curb competition and facilitate cost cutting. Reports of workers being paid a bare minimum for working with carcinogenic dyes and suffering from different forms of cancer, in lesser developed Asia, at dye houses with questionable reputation are common. And then there are anti-mold and anti-fungal chemicals unnecessarily applied to clothes. It’s not like, we would wear the same clothes forever, then why try preserving them?
Experts in the textile industry suggest that unless the government lays down stringent regulations for quality checks at manufacturing sites, use of certain reactive metals for dyes and mixtures etc, there will be no change in the production. Even natural cotton production has issues of several pesticides being used to grow them.
It is definitely up to the consumer to confirm whether the product being bought is really organic. The simplest way is wearing white – a rainbow without colors. White or light colored clothes, which use lesser dyes or paints are more eco-friendly in nature than most colored alternatives. Keeping with the trend, various reputed companies are now offering eco-labeled garments too. We, as consumers, just have to look out for certified organic fiber retailers who are clear about the source and end of their supply lines.
Source: Ecobites