Is ‘ethical’ fashion as ethical as it should be?
I think the growing trend towards purchasing ethical products and garments is fantastic. I hope it is a lasting change rather than a fad. However, I have to take issue with a couple of things. I have noticed that many ‘ethical’ fashion brands and labels use non-animal friendly products, such as silk and leather. None of these are particularly ‘ethical.’ To be honest, wool’s not great either.
Silk is the fibre that silkworms weave to produce cocoons. The process of obtaining silk involves boiling silk cocoons for twenty minutes, until they are soft and opened out. There are many humane alternatives that can be used such as nylon, silk-cotton tree and ceiba tree filaments. At the very least peace silk should be used, which lets the silkworms live out their full cycle. I can appreciate that some brands are recycling old silk garments, to avoid creating more waste, but anything new could be made using other more animal friendly materials.
Billions of animals are killed for their skin every year to produce leather. They are castrated, branded, dehorned and have their tails docked without any anaesthetic, before bleeding to death and being skinned. Most of the leather used in the U.S. and Europe comes from India, China and other countries that have minimal or no animal welfare laws. China is the world’s largest exporter of leather and 2 million cats and dogs in China are killed each year for their skin. The rearing of animals for leather has been linked to climate change, water pollution, land degradation and the reduction of biodiversity. I am aware that some ethical brands use vegetable tanned leather, which is more environmentally friendly than regular leather, but it is still not very ethical.
You might think that wool is pretty innocuous. It’s more than just a haircut for the sheep. Shearers are usually paid by volume so they often work at a fast pace, with no regard for the animal’s welfare. They frequently kick, punch and cut the sheep when shearing them. A large proportion of the world’s wool comes from Australia and New Zealand, where around 140 million sheep per year are subjected to mulesing, whereby shears are used to slice large chunks of skin off the rear ends of live sheep without anaesthetics. Intensive sheep farming is again responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental degradation.
This is all just the tip of the iceberg. I appreciate that ethical fashion does not necessarily mean vegan fashion, but I do think that those producing what they deem to be ethical items, should take the welfare of animals into account. Rearing animals for their skin/wool/fur is not environmentally friendly or ethical, in my opinion.
one way to combat the wool issue, especially for knitters (like me) is to buy your yarn from smaller companies. nowadays, many smaller yarn-makers (and roving makers if you want to spin your own!) employ small farms for their wool, where the animals are treated much more humane than what you describe. when buying clothing made of wool, i can't offer much solution, but whenever possible, buying yarn from people who spin the wool themselves from sheep they know is the way we knitters are trending towards. one way to keep our wool eco-friendly!
Posted by: robyn | June 29, 2007 6:19 PM