2016 'very likely' to be world's warmest year. Image copyright Getty Images 2016 looks poised to be the warmest year on record globally, according to preliminary data. With data from just the first nine months, scientists are 90% certain that 2016 will pass the mark set by 2015. Temperatures from January to September were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The body says temperatures should remain high enough for the rest of the year to break the previous record. El Nino has had an impact, but the most significant factor driving temperatures up continues to be CO2 emissions. What is climate change? The provisional statement on the status of the global climate in 2016 has been released early this year to help inform negotiators meeting in Morocco, who are trying to push forward with the Paris Climate Agreement. The document says the year to September was 0.88 above the average for the period between 1961-90, which the WMO uses at its baseline.
Image copyright WMO "Another year. Our clothes are not made for the catwalk or the studio. They are made with a naturalness and quality fit for the real world. For our Autumn Winter 16 campaign we acknowledge that our clothes are for people and real life. Prized, not precious. Lived in, not modelled. So we asked our campaign photographer Todd Hido to tell us more about memorable moments on set and his admiration for poignant images. You’re well-known for your captivating portrait shots.
I’ve always been interested in poignant pictures that appear to be part of a real exchange between the model and the photographer. What do you think the Jigsaw portraits capture? I feel like they capture people doing everyday things and feeling comfortable in the clothing that they’re wearing. How did you translate your work’s personality into this brief? In actuality it wasn’t much of a stretch. What was the atmosphere like on set when you were shooting? Any memorable moments you’d like to share from the shoot? Edited by Nakhalar Sterling.
Fast Fashion Is the Second Dirtiest Industry in the World, Next to Big Oil - EcoWatch. “The clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world ... second only to oil,” the recipient of an environmental award told a stunned Manhattan audience earlier this year. “It’s a really nasty business ... it’s a mess.” Since 2011, the Greenpeace Detox campaign has challenged some of the world's most popular clothing brands to eliminate all releases of hazardous chemicals. Photo credit: Jonas Gratzer / Greenpeace While you’d never hear an oil tycoon malign his bonanza in such a way, the woman who stood at the podium, Eileen Fisher, is a clothing industry magnate. On a warm spring night at a Chelsea Piers ballroom on the Hudson River, Fisher was honored by Riverkeeper for her commitment to environmental causes. When we think of pollution, we envision coal power plants, strip-mined mountaintops and raw sewage piped into our waterways.
Globalization means that your shirt likely traveled halfway around the world in a container ship fueled by the dirtiest of fossil fuels. The Life Cycle of a T Shirt. .22 lbs fertilizers .01 lbs pesticides 1.2 lbs fossil fuels 700 gallons water That right there? That’s a recipe for ONE COTTON T SHIRT! We’ve all gotten freebie t shirts at an event before- a charity walk, a fundraiser, an outdoor festival. T shirts are not only an all American fashion staple, they’re a marketing tool, an incentive, a novelty. Let’s consider the life cycle of a t shirt. There are 5 major stages in the life cycle of a t shirt : material, production, shipping, use and disposal.
“The material phase of the lifecycle involves farming, irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting and ginning. One American cotton farm can yield enough cotton to produce over 9 million t shirts each year. Once the cotton is grown and harvested, the production phase begins. After the t shirt is made, it needs to be transported. Shipping vessels move large containers of all sorts of imports across the seas every week. The next phase is retail, which may seem like the least harmful phase but… think again. 1.
Sustainable Fashion Made Easy | Huffington Post. Fast Fashion is Big Business. There is some serious money to be made meeting the seemingly insatiable demand of consumers in the developed world for cheap clothes. This demand for cheaper and cheaper clothes means that corners are cut at every level of the supply chain as retailers and manufacturers strive to cut prices, while still maintaining their bottom line. Inevitably it is the people at the bottom of this long and complicated supply chain that are suffering. People working long days in often dangerous conditions for less than a living wage.
And it’s not just the fashion workers who are paying for our desire for ever cheaper clothes, the planet is suffering too. I think on some level we all kind of know this. The whole time there is a demand for cheap clothes, and there is money to be made, manufacturers and retailers will continue to look for ways to cut their margins and increase their profits. And that’s were we come in. As consumers we have power. Sustainability And Fashion Education: The Next Generation | Huffington Post. During the last decade I spent six years working for mainstream fashion labels, my frustration growing as my awareness of the industry’s lack of ethics increased. One black Monday in particular sticks out, a sales review meeting that focused on organic cotton denim jeans.
They were selling well but the question was whether this was due to their organic status or because of their design. The subtext was made clear. If they were popular because of their design, we could switch to manufacturing the jeans with cheaper conventional cotton, while continuing to charge the same price. Profit before ethics. I faced this dilemma every day, at every level. A subsequent petty battle over the provision of fair trade tea in the staff canteen was farcical but the message was obvious. In 2008 I left my job to start an ethical label called Outsider, with the tag line “Ethical fashion should look just like fashion”.
But the industry has gradually changed. However, progress is not universal. Fast Fashion Is "Drowning" The World. We Need A Fashion Revolution! | Huffington Post. “Nothing to wear?” Well here’s something to think about: Every piece of clothing we buy has had an impact on our planet before we even bring it home. That’s before you step out of the door, walk down the street, and spot that attractive item you see hanging in the window. First, there’s water consumption. Two billion pairs of jeans are produced every year, and a typical pair takes 7,000 litres of water to produce. For a t-shirt, it takes 2,700 litres of water to make just one - that’s the amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days! A shop at “International Jeans Wholesale City” in Xintang, the “denim capital of the world” in Guangdong province, China.
Secondly, there’s the dyeing process of which 1.7 million tonnes of various chemicals are used; not to mention the hazardous chemicals like PFCs that leave a permanent impact on our environment. PFCs (per- and poly-fluorinated chemicals) are used in outdoor clothing to make materials stain resistant and waterproof. Is H&M misleading customers with all its talk of sustainability? — Quartz. H&M probably talks about sustainability more than any other fast-fashion brand. It produces a Conscious collection made using sustainable and recycled materials, creates glossy ad campaigns to encourage garment recycling, and has a voucher program offering discounts to those who donate their old clothes at its stores.
On April 18, it kicks off a major project intended to collect 1,000 tons of used clothes, called World Recycle Week, that it’s promoting heavily, even making a music video in collaboration with rapper M.I.A. These efforts sound great, but critics—myself included—have questioned how much they actually mitigate the massive and growing company’s environmental impact. Some suggest these displays of devotion to the notion of sustainability are “greenwashing,” distracting from the extent of the harm the company does, and even boosting sales. To start with, the biggest strike against H&M is the giant pile of clothing it produces every day. H&M Team Up With M.I.A. To Launch World Recycle Week. The Top Five Mindful Fashion Reads | Huffington Post. When surfing the web there is a multitude of constantly evolving information on sustainable fashion, and to tackle it can seem like a daunting task.
However, there are some great experts in the field whose inspirational research can provide us with a better understanding of the complex issues. Whether you are just beginning to take up more conscious consumption practices or you are a long time follower of sustainable fashion, these five reads offer great insight and are my personal favorites. 1. Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys by Kate Fletcher This is where it’s all started for me. Organized in two parts, the first four chapters of the book outline the key stages of a garment’s lifecycle and address issues related to the growing and processing of materials, to the manufacturing of clothing, to practices of usage and laundering as well as of reuse and recycling. 2. 3. 4. 5. Fast Fashion: Can It Be Sustainable? | Huffington Post. In the last 50 years, the way we produce and consume fashion has dramatically changed. Fast fashion retailers have made the case that they have democratised the fashion experience - no longer reserved for the elite, fashion is available and accessible to all.
Everyone can afford to wear the latest trends, and to regularly experience the short-lived high of a new fashion purchase, and the pleasure of wearing something new. For large fashion retailers “fashion democracy” has happily coincided with burgeoning sales, revenues, and profits. This has become the model that dominates High Streets, certainly in the UK and the US, and increasingly elsewhere. On the surface it seems to suit everyone - certainly those who have buying power and thus influence in a market-driven business model. In my ten years of growing the Ethical Fashion Forum, I have seen a movement gather pace against fast fashion as the status quo. Can fast fashion be sustainable? Let’s start with the environment. 1. 2. 3. 4. Bangladesh factory collapse - The facts and what's being done so far. SOURCE reviews all the press surrounding Wednesday's factory collapse disaster in Bangladesh.
We take a look at the facts, trying to get to the bottom of how it happened, what's being done now and what organisations are demanding to be done going forward - including our own Value Chain Call to Action. Image credit: Associated Press SOURCE has launched an industry Call to Action to build a constructive response to this disaster: Click here, and take 3 minutes to register your support or ideas, by 3rd May 2013.
The death toll of Wednesday’s tragic factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh has reached 382 victims with about 2,500 survivors being accounted for, making it the worst disaster in Bangladesh’s garment production history. Hundreds of workers and civilians have taken to the streets in anger against appalling working conditions in garment factories. The building employed 3,122 workers in total, but it’s uncertain how many were in the building at the time of the collapse. 1.) 2.) 5 Truths the Fast Fashion Industry Doesn't Want You to Know | Shannon Whitehead.
The fashion industry gets a lot of flack these days. The excess, the overtly sexual advertising, the humanitarian issues, the waste, the lawsuits, the list goes on. The industry giants have dedicated millions of dollars to massive PR campaigns, going so far as to launch “conscious collections“ and donate proceeds to worthy causes. Yet despite these efforts, the truth remains — fashion is one of the dirtiest industries in the world.
Here’s what they don’t want you to know: 1.) The fashion industry is designed to make you feel “out of trend” after one week. Once upon a time, there were two fashion seasons: Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. According to Elizabeth Cline in her book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, fast-fashion merchandise is typically priced much lower than the competition, operating on a business model of low quality / high volume. 2.) An article featured on Jezebel confirms: “The jig is up: Big brands like J. 3.) 4.) So why should we care? 5.) Lady Gaga.