Gay rights may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Walmart, but it’s sure on the mind of the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer.

While Wal Mart is battling employees demanding union rights and higher wages for full time workers, the company says its upgrading its healthcare benefits programs to employees in all 50 states to include coverage for same-sex domestic partnerships.

Just doing business rather than offering a full-on show of support for gay rights, the world’s largest retail chain said of the move in a company-wide memo: “It’s a business decision, not a moral or political decision. We operate in 50 states, hundreds of municipalities and Puerto Rico, and as clarified under the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), each of these states are developing different definitions of marriage, domestic partner, civil union, etc. By developing a single definition for all Walmart associates in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, we are able to ensure consistency for associates across our markets.”

The memo went on to remind Walmart employees about etiquette: “Your behavior matters. The words you use also matter. We are counting on you to be thoughtful, supportive and understanding of multiple viewpoints. Your visibility can make a big difference to how associates feel.”

The retail chain may be following the letter of the law on the recent DOMA ruling, which is certainly good news for gay rights, but it’s still trying to avoid labor discussions with employees. According to CBS, employees say the average $12.83 per hour for full time Walmart workers is unlivable—and becoming increasingly rare. “Factor in that the company won’t say what the overall average wage is nor how many of its employees can’t get fulltime work, and the real average likely drops even lower. Low-paying part-time work has become a national trend and problem.”

In the wake of the fast food strikes that have been occurring around the country over wage increases, a group calling itself OUR Walmart says that its organizing strikes in order to encourage the retailer to discuss higher wages and a stronger union presence in its stores. But like the fast food chains, Walmart may be taking the position that it’s doing its best, CBS reports that corporate interests fund PR campaigns opposing wage increases and unions. “Issues of wages and economic disparities are important and need to be discussed. However, much of the conversation is being directed by the actions and PR campaigns of large opponents with their own interests and resources far beyond what average people have available.”

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: walmart

Related stories

That Happened: DOMA, Wendy Davis, Voters’ Rights and Vaginas

Target Ad Promotes Gay Marriage: Supporting Equal Rights or Just Marketing?

The post Gay Rights in Aisle 3? Walmart to Support Same-Sex Partnerships (But Not Higher Wages) appeared first on EcoSalon.

In the last of this 4 part series, undercover industry writer, Louise Lagosi address the history of fashion marketing, the strategies used to build the perfect consumer while covering up poor quality, and how those tactics have effected us as a society. We also look at how the fashion industry and marketing is changing with the times to keep up with an evolving society of people.

If you read the first three parts of this series, you might be in the mood to avoid the media, shut off your TV, stop shopping, and just give up on fashion. But, other than offering you peace of mind, what would that accomplish? As easy as it is to point fingers, the leaders of the fashion industry are not the only ones responsible for the state of fashion. Society as a whole bought what was being sold without stopping as individuals to question the motives behind the advertisement or wondering if our “consumer” habits were good for us, our neighbors, or the planet.

Unless you want to go back to wearing burlap bags, and go Medieval, we all need something to adorn our bodies. And let’s face it, beautiful clothes, beautiful anything for that matter, really does make life more joyful. That said, nothing can be beautiful if it has a dirty, rotten underbelly it’s hiding. So let’s just get to the core of this thing.

Taking Responsibility

Now that the phrase “Think Globally, Act Locally” has been imprinted on our brains, we all know that shopping with small mom and pops stores, as well as supporting local designers and supply chains is the best thing we can do for our immediate environment, but how can we be effective on a global level? Have you read any articles, or signed any petitions requesting that corporations clean up their acts? Written to your government representative asking for higher international labor standards lately? Not sure who your representatives are? Well, it’s pretty easy to find out. In this age of information sharing with a little due diligence and research it’s becoming increasingly easier to figure out who’s doing business right, and who’s doing business wrong. And it’s even easier to find a petition or even to start a petition asking companies and the government to do business responsibly.

It has become more and more common to share our opinions and knowledge of this kind freely among our friends and associates, on Facebook, Twitter, and various social media sources. As a favor for your sharing the information, they in turn go on and share it with their friends and pretty soon the news has gone viral. Some of your conversations on Facebook might look something like this:

“There’s a joke going around China today that you can tell what colors are going to be in fashion next season by looking at the rivers.“

“I think I’ll opt for a nice neutral, beige from now on, thanks.”

 “Time to Stop the Fashion Pirates again. Forever 21 has gotten caught stealing yet another design from independent designers.”

“I stopped shopping at Forever 21 after my last purchase from there smelled like magic markers and fell apart in the first wash. But I do buy clothes from the local designers in my own town.“

 “Why does Disney still carry polyester jammies for kids coated in fire-retardants? Didn’t they get the memo that it’s been repeatedly proven that both the synthetic fibers in clothing and formaldehyde based fire-retardants are carcinogenic, cancer causing, hormone disrupting, and/or can cause damage to our nervous systems?!

“I wouldn’t know, I avoid both synthetics and Disney like the plague.“

 “Did you hear that Victoria’s Secret were caught slashing and throwing away garments that were returned because donating them to charity was too much of a hassle to organize?”

“I wouldn’t wear Victoria Secret, even if it were free. Let’s just say that I don’t know a single 16 year old whose boobs naturally sit directly under her chin, so why, at any age, should mine?”

Whether or not these conversations in social media and on the street actually sway the decisions of those in power to create a change in the industry, for us to be aware enough about these issues that we feel a little whistle blowing is in order can make us better, more informed, people.

Word gets around fast in this Internet Age and in no time at all, Walmart has a publicity crisis for abusing their laborers, and the Gap is making public apologies for promoting red,white, & blue flag waving products that are made in China. H&M and Nike claim they too are doing their parts, all while receiving raised eyebrows from the sustainable community, for making lofty corporate responsibility initiatives mandated for 2020 that promise unprecedented standards with little or no suggestions on how they might go about doing so. Perhaps H&M & Nike could borrow from their multibillion dollar marketing budgets to fund reaching their 2020 goals.

Are initiatives enough? Hardly, but when you’re a company that’s big enough to consume one third of the planets organic cotton supply, even a small initiative, like H&M’s organic cotton initiative can keep large amounts of fertilizer and herbicide from going into our water, provided it’s an honest effort. “Good” is questionable when you take into account that their organic cotton is not all that organic after all.

Recent New York City H&M window

With their greenwashing marketing efforts these companies still do not get the green light for sustainable shopping. In the same way we shop for food, if we can’t find clear and certifiable labeling on the product, many of us are not buying it. Some consumers are even going so far as avoiding stores with bad track records altogether, regardless of their “eco” initiatives.

In 2009, The Hartman Group’s report, titled Sustainablity: the Rise in Consumer Responsibility stated that 88% of consumers engage in what they consider to be sustainable behavior. Are people hearing concerns about water contamination or global warming and choosing to cut back where they can to help? Are fast fashion fans growing annoyed that their clothes fall apart after a couple washes when the hand-me-downs from their mother’s wardrobe seem to last forever? Have people suddenly realized that they have enough stuff in their closets that they could probably go for years without shopping and still maintain appearances?

Author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Elizabeth Cline, describes the pivotal moment in her consumer mindset, “When I piled up all of my clothes in the middle of my bedroom, I was astonished that there wasn’t much variety within the mound of poorly made clothing. It was mostly all one color, and I had bought more or less the same few items over and over again. I wasn’t using most of it, and most of it was cheep crap that I didn’t even like very much. Overall, I was unsatisfied with what was in there.”

She explains the transformation that occurred in that moment of realization, “It made me more mindful. I shop my own closet now. I have stopped buying repeat garments. I don’t crave having a million tops. That doesn’t really interest me anymore. I want one or two good garments for each category to make complete outfits within my wardrobe. I want to save my money to buy really nice items to fill in the holes.”

Signs of Change in Mainstream Fashion Media

CFDA Leader, Diane Von Furstenburg, and American Vogue Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour, recently released that they support encouraging a cleaner Fashion Industry through an initiative presented by the NRDC called Clean By Design. We’re still waiting to see how they do clean up, but they have taken the first step, which is openly acknowledging the elephant in the room. This is nothing short of a miracle.

Fashion Labels Evolving With the Times

Eileen Fisher

This privately owned company has always taken a holistic approach to designing clothing. The brand carefully chooses fibers for their sustainable, community based, growing methods, natural content, longevity, and feel. They work with collectives and factories around the world that pay fair-trade wages. They design clothes that are timeless and that do not relate to any trends, allowing the clothes to survive as long as their high quality materials do. And through their recent initiatives like Ampersand, they have been educating their customers on why choosing their products supports a sustainable environment here on earth for everyone involved.

Patagonia 

Patagonia also keeps their marketing to a minimum, but when they do promote something, the message is unusual for a clothing company. They promote clean water initiatives, such as Our Common Waters, in their recent Common Threads Initiative, they tell people to stop buying more than they need. They also provide transparency in their supply chain like in The Footprint Chronicles, with this interactive map on their site showing exactly where their factories are located with stats, reports, and a brief on Patagonia’s history with each one. This brand ultimately puts their dollars in recycled materials innovations, such as polar fleece made of recycled bottles, and maintaining factory standards, so they can provide more responsible products to their customers.

Timberland

Timberland is a brand that is committed to the outdoors. Which is why they have made  developed TIMBERLAND RESPONSIBILITY, their plan for significantly reducing their companies emissions through the research, evaluation, and investment in company structures that will allow them to run cleaner and produce products that have a smaller impact on the earth. The company reports are transparent and available to the public on their home site, grading their efforts and describing all the methods used to achieve their challenging goals to reduce their company wide climate impact.

Levi’s 

Levi’s has been doing business with the goal of striving towards sustainability and excellence for over 100 years now. They give cash credits to customers who return their old Levi’s in for their denim recycling programs and they have been working on increasingly finding ways to reducing their water use in their denim production processes. Are they singing about their exceptional practices in their ad campaigns to help better educate their customers? Let’s just say this is one of the places where they still have room to improve.

Pendleton

This nearly 150 year old American company produces much of it’s premium products, from fibers grown, spun, dyed, and woven in America. They keep marketing to a minimum and keep their funding aimed at doing business responsibly and offering the best quality products possible to the customers they serve. Their product’s are so beautifully made, by  that they end up heirlooms in most of the fortunate homes that they grace.

Change is indeed happening all around, but most of all it starts with each one of us. We have to make up our own minds. What type of consumers are we?

Image: oxfam, Fashionista, Last Night’s Garbage,Amy DuFault

The post Fashion Marketing 101: From Social Media to Social Responsibility, Fashion Evolves appeared first on EcoSalon.

QuotesDaily quotes at EcoSalon.

“Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, ‘She doesn’t have what it takes.’ They will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.”

-Clare Boothe Luce

Image: Walmart Stores

The post For You appeared first on EcoSalon.

7 truths you need to know about China’s environmental notoriety.

As I’m writing this, I’m preparing for my return trip to Chongqing, China after a two-month vacation living at home with my parents in beautiful (albeit morbidly freezing) Fargo. While I’m reveling in the fact that I’ll be going to a place with weather over zero, I’m a little less psyched than last September when my boyfriend and I first left for China, with hearts full of hope and three suitcases full of dreams.

Hope and dreams aside, it’s principally the glamor of living in a foreign country that was crushed in the months that ensued after my arrival, during which I studied my brains out, Chinese style (I’m studying Mandarin – learning 30 completely different hieroglyphs daily and being tested on them the next), got to do my laundry by hand, and slept “comfortably” each night with my boyfriend on a lovely spring-loaded twin mattress.

The great thing about international travel is that you learn what you can truly live with (and without). In this case, I learned I can live with all of the aforementioned, plus long layovers, 14-hour flights, ten-times-crazier-than-New-York cab drivers, and much much more. In retrospect, I can even laugh about most things.

But this is what I can’t laugh about: pollution boogers.

I’m sorry, dear reader, but the thing I am dreading above and beyond all else, is waking up with my nose plugged full of black, coal-sooty, shall we say, “organic matter”.

You may have heard all about China’s pollution problems. You may know that China is the biggest net CO2 emitter, having overtaken the U.S. in 2007. You may have even heard that 16 of the world’s 20 most disgustingly grimy, unlivable, unbreathable cities in the world are in China. But nothing compares to actually waking up to the lovely smell of pollution.

Here are seven things you need to know about China’s environmental problems, from an un-seasoned, non-scientist, pollution-breather. For these purposes, forgive me if I wax a little more serious, but let’s be honest: this is serious stuff.

1.  The human cost of China’s pollution woes is concretely and directly related to astronomical cancer rates and unforgivably low quality of life in many areas.

Take a look at China’s infamous “cancer villages,” villages and towns in China where the entire population has experienced the effect of pollution-linked cancer either personally or inter-personally. These horrifying areas of China reflect the degree to which pollution has directly harmed not just the land and the air, but the people as well. Cancer is China’s #1 cause of death. Only one percent of China‘s 560 million urban dwellers breathe air that the European Union’s standards would consider breathable. While Cancer Villages are poor examples of the whole, they are microcosms of the thousands if not tens of thousands of towns and cities where China’s coal reliance, unclean industry and waste practices have left their mark by a layer of soot and grime that most Chinese treat as a standard feature of the urban landscape.

2. When individuals speak up about this human cost, especially if they tackle environmental problems as a human rights issue, they put themselves at great risk.

One risk is being targeted by rich factory owners and industrial moguls whose wealth is a powerful tool for bribery and an incentive to all around thuggery. The other, more remote but very crushing risk is being deemed subversive and inimical to state stability and becoming a political prisoner for it. It’s downright sad that the greed and corruption underpinning the risk of pissing off the powerful, undermines and reduces environmental advocacy and results in little to no change. It’s even sadder that beneath the risk of becoming a political prisoner there’s a fundamental irony: stifling the voices of people who don’t want heavy metals in their children’s food or have no desire to see their neighbors drop dead from pollution-caused cancer could, even more than letting people advocate for human and environmental rights, become a truer risk of social breakdown.

3. Most of the worst pollution is concentrated in comparatively poorer Northern and inland areas.

Collectively, these areas are the engine that is moving total economic progress forward. They are where coal (China’s life support) is mined, heavy metals are extracted, heavy industry is booming, and domestic goods are produced. They are also the nexus of growing inland-coastal inequality that correlates to urban-rural and poor-rich disparities. Heavily polluting industry is kept away from the wealth and health of coastal poster cities like Shenzhen, not to mention from the newly rich who live there and the tourists who come to see the glossy side of China. There are no aforementioned “cancer villages” on the Southern coast.

4.  The U.S. and China are both part of an import-export machine that drives the global economy, but goods aren’t the only thing we trade.

While the U.S. exports more and more black money-making chunks of carbon to fuel China’s coal dependence, China exports its fair share: acid rain and particulates. If you take a look at this graph, you can see that coal exports from the United States into China sky-rocketed from 386,950 tons in 2009 to 4,071,837 tons in 2010. That’s more than 10 times in one year, proof that pushing to green public policy is not enough- we need to be global. That’s not all, if you’re reading this in Los Angeles, you’re breathing multinational pollution, and some of it is from China. As the New York Times put it, “China’s problem has become the world’s problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China’s coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.” 

5. The central government actually has some comparatively brawny environmental regulations, hefty fines for non-compliance, and significant investments in green technology, and to a degree, it’s helped. But it’s not the whole story.

While a degree of mistrust is certainly appropriate, for the most part media reports about China’s greening efforts are reporting the truth. In 2009, China’s state council ambitiously stated that it plans on reducing its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 (from 2005 levels). Its newly released 12th, five-year plan  (China’s centrally-designed map toward continued progress in 2011 to 2015), clearly indicates a continuing commitment to reducing its environmental issues, including big investments in green energy aimed at kicking its carbon habit and expanding what’s now in place. For example, China has not only overtaken the U.S. in carbon emissions, but according to the Guardian, it has also left the U.S. in the dust with its wind-power generating capacity. 

Here’s the part where we tend to fall prey to China’s image machine: While the central government is by all appearances trying, it isn’t trying that hard. The problem is that centrally designed incentives for local governments are structured around the economy not the environment. Social (re: economic) stability (re: growth) trumps environmental concerns. If a regulation will harm the local economy–say the expense of alienating factory owners by forcing them to put caps on a factory’s smokestacks, a local official just won’t follow it. And the central government, big investments aside, just isn’t willing to change its incentives.

6. Most Chinese feel for the environment and recognize that its destruction is a bad thing, but hope for continuing economic ascension trumps the fear of environmental decline.

Just as in the United States, when it comes to daily decision-making, whether it be by average, everyday people or by high level local officials and factory owners, “the bottom line” is what most people think about. And the bottom line in China is this: Now is the time to get rich (er, “moderately prosperous“) or die trying.  While the die trying part will likely come from destroying the environment, the reward is success in a society that desperately wants to prove its global clout after a century and a half of humiliation by Western powers. 

It’s also important to know that there’s just not the same level of “green” awareness in China as there is in the West and Japan right now. For example, in Chongqing there is a series of slogans run by the charismatic and well-connected mayor called “the Five Chongqings,” which are five visions of Chongqing’s future that are meant to guide its development into a global metropolitan city. One of them is translated into English as “Green Chongqing,” that is, a Chongqing with more trees. More trees is good, but the goal is not necessarily undertaken from an environmental standpoint. In this case, the vision is aesthetic. More trees means a prettier city that more people will want to visit, which means more tourism, and more inflow of capital.

While an expanded notion of “green” and an expanded sense of responsibility toward the environment would be great, most Chinese don’t see themselves as having the luxury to place that above its long economic project that has to date raised millions and millions of people out of abject poverty. And as far as they’re concerned, that project is nowhere near complete.

7.   We are implicated, and in a more complicated way than you may think. It goes without saying that China’s industry produces our products and supports our consumption. There’s no denying it. Just go to Wal-Mart and check every plastic thing you can find. But while we cannot escape this fact, self-flagellation isn’t quite the right response either. Our imports from China have been the linchpin in China’s export machine, the very mechanism that has supported the incredible feat that some call China’s miracle; its aforementioned poverty-elimination project. 500 million Chinese escaped poverty between 1981 and 2004, and in just the 3 years after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, poverty was cut by another 3rd. Our consumption, while we often lament its destructive facets, is a huge part of China’s ability to make that happen.

Let me put it in real terms: Tomorrow I may wake up with black boogers, but in a few months I’ll go home to my country, go to Target, and buy a Chinese-made plastic storage bin so I can organize all of the crap I bought while I was in Chongqing. And while I’m fueling the environmental cause of the current source of my sticky goober dread, I’ll be contributing to a global supply chain that is exploitative, harmful, and has performed the previously unimagined feat of building for my Chinese friends a system in which they can support themselves economically without the need of a communist leadership to give them an “iron rice bowl.” Oh, the ambivalence.

Images: Justin D, Lance Webel, Robertg6n1, blacksmithinstitute, malouenfrankinchina, J_Ensley

The post 7 Things You Should Know About China’s Pollution Problem appeared first on EcoSalon.

While initially that headline might not mean anything to you, under David Basson’s leadership at Greensouce, organic cotton was sourced for the very first time to Walmart. In fact, since 1999, the company has planted over 8,000 acres of organic cotton fields.

No small feat.

Under Basson’s reign, Seattle’s Greensource is now ranked as the 9th largest user of organic cotton in the world for its very own “Greensource” and “Re-Gen” (Recycled Generation) branded apparel. According to a Greensource press release, if the company’s considerable private label production for major retailers, including Walmart (“Faded Glory”) and Kmart (“Route 66”), was taken into account, the company would actually rank much higher.

David Basson, CEO of Greensource

No matter how you feel about Walmart selling organic clothing, as a supplier for them, Greensource’s pros far outweigh the cons. The brand grows its own organic cotton crop, is building schools for its workers’ children, uses only organic cotton and other sustainable fibers and has certified all five of its manufacturing facilities according to the new Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). In addition, the company uses an online system enabling shoppers to input a code found on a garment label and track the garment’s voyage from the field to the store.

The tracking system gives customers a rare opportunity to trace their garments from field to final production using a Greensource brand product ID # on each hang tag that one can use to check the history and authenticity of the product purchased.

With all this progress soon behind Basson marking major strides in the sustainable fashion field, one can only imagine how Greensource will move forward.

Taking over the reins in January 2011 and continuing the company’s organic cotton leadership will be John Flynn, currently vice president of design and development, and Brady Hill, currently vice president of marketing, two men we’ll all keep a close watch on.

The post Greensource CEO David Basson Retires appeared first on EcoSalon.

According to Ecotextile News, the Chinese government recently “ordered the closure of over 2,000 companies in 18 different industries – including the dyeing and finishing sector – as the country mulls a new environmental tax on manufacturing to crack down on highly polluting industries.”

This environmental tax will likely be enforced on carbon dioxide emissions and discharges of polluted water and, according to Ecotextile News, “would form part of Beijing’s drive to make its economic growth cleaner.”

This is welcome news for the worldwide eco community struggling to crack down on highly polluting, highly energy-wasting facilities, but will this only force the outed to set up shop in another country that doesn’t have proper enforcement in place?

According to MSN, a typical scenario when production is moved from countries like China to lower-cost labor markets in Vietnam and Bangladesh, “a huge restructuring in the global supply chain aimed at reducing costs,”  is the next logical step. Currently, a smaller (but no less dramatic)  restructuring is the movement of companies inland in China from coastal areas.

One of the biggest supporters of the move? Walmart whose shifting of the way it buys its private-label goods (eg. Faded Glory) it is estimated can save $4 billion to $12 billion with a few minor adjustments.

MSN says: “The company also thinks it can find cost savings by even further globalizing the way it buys goods. Instead of its current practice of buying for each national market separately, Walmart is creating four global merchandising centers. For example, a center in Mexico City will handle merchandising for emerging markets. The company plans to extend this strategy to global sourcing of fruits and vegetables, too.

As a result, companies in coastal China will find themselves in competition on price not just with companies in inland China but also with companies in even-lower-cost economies around the world.

In textiles, for example, a company in coastal China, where wages range from $117 to $147 a month, will find itself in competition with companies in Bangladesh paying $60 a month.”

While these new moves in the Chinese government’s crackdown on pollution will allow them to meet environmental standards under a current Five Year Plan, what will be the repercussions? Is there a whole other conversation to be had about ethics?

Above image by Jakob Montrasio

The post Re-Thinking China appeared first on EcoSalon.

Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that whatever the giant retailer, Walmart, does sends shock waves through their supply chain. Lately they’ve introduced some bold initiatives in greening their supply chain. Are the efforts real or are they marketing? Will they help the environment, consumers, workers and producers – or harm them? The answer is: All of the above.

Walmart has been busy developing a sustainability index for every product it sells. I could argue (and others have) that flimsy, cheap plastic consumer goods people don’t actually need are not sustainable by definition.

But what about food and household cleaners? Those are not recreational purchases.

And many people, in many parts of the country, need to shop at Walmart because, frankly, there are no other options or they simply can’t afford the local stores.

According to Change.org, opening Walmarts in areas known as “food deserts” is really just a band-aid that masks the underlying causes of poverty and inequality.

This is true and there’s no doubt it is a complicated issue. Similarly, many commenters pointed out in this article by Marc Gunther that the entire model of how Walmart builds and spreads across the landscape is flawed. Again, indisputably true.

But Walmart isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. Is it possible to look at some of their initiatives in a positive light?

For example, the recent news that Walmart is partnering with the leading green cleaning product brand, Seventh Generation, was widely lauded for its potential to bring truly green products to a larger audience. But on the other hand, as this Treehugger piece asks, does the partnership simply lend undeserved credibility to the retailer’s green efforts?

And what of the retailer’s local food initiatives?

In the midst of a highly entertaining grocery smackdown in The Atlantic in which a bunch of foodies choose Walmart produce over Whole Food’s in some aspects of a blind tasting, there’s a little tease about Walmart’s Heritage Agriculture program. The program encourages farms within a day’s drive of one of the company’s warehouses to grow crops that would normally be trucked from far-away states.

The three-tiered strategy of the Heritage Agriculture program is to create a transparent supply chain of local and regional sources, support women and minority businesses, and reinvigorate historic growing areas for produce that is popular with the United States’ growing minority communities.

This all sounds great. On the surface, it could be a powerful way to re-regionalize the food system, keep farmers on their land, and increase the diversity of crops grown in different parts of the country. A regional, diverse food system is better for the environment than monocropping and more likely to result in increased accessibility to better quality food for consumers.

The problem is that Walmart doesn’t do anything without a compelling business reason. And often when a whale as large as Walmart moves an inch, it displaces everything around it. In Walmart’s case, the business reason is always to obtain products at the lowest price possible and pass that savings on to consumers. This could end up being a problem for the very farmers Walmart supports with the initiative. In 2006 farmers received just 19 cents of every dollar consumers plunked down for food. That’s a pretty small margin to work on, and with Walmart in the mix, it could get worse.

Walmart has a reputation for squeezing suppliers. Consider if Walmart, with its immense power, offers to buy a small, regional farmer’s entire harvest. The farmer, already squeezed by the system, may jump at the chance to sell all her output. If the farm no longer had sufficient supply to continue to sell to its local mom and pop and co-op stores (assuming any exist) then those stores would have to find other suppliers and try to compete with Walmart on price.

Competing with Wal-Mart on price is impossible. Those stores would likely go out of business, taking with them the only other outlets that small farmers have for their products, putting people out of work, and decreasing choices for community members. Once all other buyers are gone, Walmart could pretty much pay the farmer as little as it wants. In this way, we could end up with the control of our food system concentrated in the hands of one corporation, killing any chance we might have of rebuilding community based food systems that are more democratic in nature.

And it’s not just the farmers. Walmart squeezes entire communities economically. Once Walmart is one of the only employers in an area it can effectively keep wages down and unions out. When the farmers don’t make enough money to live on and neither do the employees of the only game in town, you can bet everyone is dependent on the always low prices that Walmart offers.

It’s true we need affordable, accessible, high quality food in all communities, but wouldn’t it be better to fix it from the ground up systemically instead of leaving it to one company?

Maybe Walmart’s grand plan to green and localize its supply chain will remove XX amount of carbon from the atmosphere. But some things can’t be quantified. Like the pleasure of talking to your neighbors and connecting with the people who grow your food. It just makes for stronger communities and relationships. This article makes the point that no matter how much local food Walmart buys, it can never replace the deeply human interactions that happen in a farmers’ market.

I would also add that it’s within these interactions that democratic change happens and, while we may cautiously applaud Walmart’s efforts for the great impact they might have, it’s not time to roll over yet. I think a more democratic food system is worth fighting for. As long as I have a choice, I will continue to shop for seasonal produce at my local farmers’ market.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Monochrome Flickr

The post The Mixed Grocery Bag That Is Walmart appeared first on EcoSalon.

Did you know that nobody in Washington, D.C. is overweight? Also, people are fat because they are lazy slobs, period.

Get hip to this: people used to walk more, back in the “Old Days.” They also died of syphilis and croup and had slaves, but whatever. New fattie James Polk blames his freshly expanding waistline on a recent move from Washington, D.C. to suburban Mississippi, where “overly-ample ‘waddler[s]'” are carted to “the front door of Wal-Mart” in an article titled “Fat People Don’t Walk” at the New American Village. Because fat people don’t walk, they just get airlifted to their next donut, amirite?

Presumably, thin, black-clad city dwellers are always jogging chicly to their next Urban Funk Double-Dutch slash Brazilian jiu jitsu class/exciting laptop-necessitating job/rooftop garden party. The article is couched in terms of “city planning” and “medical costs” and “I’m really just concerned about your health here, guys,” (which, worry less, okay?) but it’s swimming in fat – and poverty-bashing. Apparently it’s bad enough to be fat, but going to Wal-Mart while being fat is unpardonable and merits public shaming.

Look, walking more is great. It’s good for you, it doesn’t pollute, it frees up resources – I’m all for walking. I’m all for being healthy and active. But putting fat/poor/tasteless/rural on an oppositional axis to slim/attractive/urban/culturally-and-morally superior is not only incorrect, it’s cruel.

I’m not sure what the point of this article is supposed to be. Let’s rebuild Los Angeles to fit an East-Coast gentleman-of-leisure’s specifications? Force calisthenics on Southern rural-dwellers with few resources? Reproduce widely-disseminated stereotypes about what fat people must be like? Or just point and laugh at all those dumb fatties at Wal-Mart?

Image: kayugee

The post No, <em>This</em> Is Why You’re Fat appeared first on EcoSalon.

Last week the Gap, in collaboration with the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, launched their newest collections at their Fifth Avenue concept store.

The collection features sustainable jewelry designs from Monique Péan, menswear from Patrik Ervell and luxe women’s wear by designer Sophie Théallet. The trio was titled by the CFDA in 2009 as “The most celebrated in the industry.”

We celebrate Monique for making the grade as a sustainable designer with this pack!

While some of Péan’s organic materials sound a little exotic (water snake skin beads and naturally shed buffalo horns), there’s still something to be said of a designer working with a big box store who supports eco-friendly designs.

This is nothing new. We’ve seen collaborations with Payless, H&M, Target and Kohl’s and we all praise the initiative these companies have taken to make sustainable strides (some more than others). But why does it always come back to one particular big box store screwing it all up?

Case in point? Wal-Mart, a company that tries to convince us that they’re doing so much for us and the environment.

But according to a recent ecouterre post regarding lead tainted accessories from a popular Wal-Mart collaboration with Miley Cyrus, price tags shouldn’t be our worst fear when it comes to shopping.

Editor Jasmin Malik Chua writes: “Just last month, the big-box retailer yanked an entire line of Miley Cyrus-brand necklaces and bracelets from its shelves after tests performed for the Associated Press found they contained high levels of the toxic metal cadmium.”

Though marketed for adults (because so many adults wear Miley Cyrus jewelry), safety issues regarding the jewelry going in one’s mouth was cause for alarm.

CBS news reports, “the items are not known to be dangerous if they are simply worn but concerns come when youngsters bite or suck on the jewelry, as many children are apt to do.”

CBS concludes that “Federal regulators’ own research says that kids start becoming interested in making their own jewelry around age six or eight. As for products featuring Miley Cyrus, she is 17 and her appeal reaches down to kindergartners. ”

Maybe instead of tutoring musicians older than her on American Idol, child star Cyrus should learn how to create and collaborate sustainable with an adult like Monique Péan. After all, Cyrus is just a child. Better yet, Wal-Mart could spend some time carefully investigating their collaborations so they can stop looking like, well, schmucks?

The post Buffalo Horns, Snake Skin and Cadmium? appeared first on EcoSalon.

In part three of Dumbing Down American Design, we talk with Han Lee, owner of Fine Line Production, a company that does everything from pattern making  to grading and hang tags. We also speak with Nancie Chan of Tyler Production, a cutting and sewing floor. Both companies are located in New York City’s historic Garment District.

We revisit the driving question: Has our quest for convenience and rock bottom prices forever altered fashion and is American design becoming a thing of the past?

A week ago today, I was in New York City with Part 2 guest, designer Anthony Lilore. Anthony was nice enough to take time out of his schedule to take me around New York City’s Garment District.

Our first stop is with Han Lee, owner of Fine Line Production. Han sits down to talk and the conversation quickly veers from what he does for clients to who his clients are. Lee currently works with about 30 designers who help sustain his company. If they are succeeding, so is he.

“[I work with] the smaller designers,” he says. “The designers who want to be part of their design process, who can’t afford to manufacture overseas.”

I ask if perhaps smaller designers are more authentically connected to what they’re selling. He smiles and nods.

I throw out a comment for reaction: that (rumor has it) the bigger designers don’t even design much of their own collections. They simply pick a design and ship it to their manufacturing facility overseas where the facility offers a few more designs based on the original. The final design is picked and quickly put into production.

“True,” he says.

Second stop: Nancie Chan of Tyler Production, a cutting and sewing floor, also in the Garment District.

She’s a little perplexed as to why I would want to be there. There’s something to be said about working various jobs in the fashion industry, and never getting to see behind the scenes. This is what my trip is all about. As a buyer, rep, writer and marketer for sustainable designers over the past five years, I’ve always wanted to step inside a room like this.

It holds no glamour; it’s a space filled with hardworking women who are simply passionate about what they are doing. I ask Nancie if she works with larger or indie designers more frequently.

“The smaller ones,” she says, adding that some she works with come from unlikely fields. “Like finance,” she says.

I ask her if she means the designer cmarchuska; her face lights up. Yes, that’s the one.

I own a few cmarchuska pieces and love that I now know exactly where the pieces were made. Chan has no problem saying on the record that her most problematic clients are the bigger designers who never pay or are detached from their labels and the decisions made about them. She cites at least two designers who owe her $100,000.

“What about the smaller designers?”

“They always pay on time,” she says.

There are two scenarios I want you to imagine. In one, I see these connected, independent designers who pay on time ruling American design. They have convinced you that paying a little more is worth it because their clothes are real and inspired and sustainably manufactured, all in the U.S.A. They’ve rubbed off on the mainstream designers and the majority is now producing with a conscience – and with personal inspiration. Our clothing has a story.

American manufacturing facilities in major cities are working together to source and invest in clean facilities, educating the steadfast seasoned employees in new ways where fit, fashion and functionality work together. Our fashion technology is innovative and we have become dynamic in our approach. Because you believe in these smaller designers, they are thriving financially instead of waitressing by day and designing by night.

They enrich design by offering you choices of their own creation, not the pick-one-of-three-designs-you-like scenario that comes out looking like, well, everything else.
You feel unique in your clothes and dressing is a fun part of your day.

But in scenario two, larger designers rule American design. Their made-from-afar designs are being shipped to their holding warehouses where they are shipped to boutiques. Designers are nothing more than a good marketing campaign. They are no longer designs. We all dress virtually the same.

And in some dystopian Logan’s Run-like nightmare where we’re brainwashed that the consumption of our resources are best managed by killing everyone who reaches the age of 30 instead of just being conscious of what we consume, we no longer care what we wear, all designers get phased out and large corporations like Wal-Mart clothe us (and feed, and supply us with everything we need to survive).

Image: it’s life

The post Dumbing Down American Design, Part 3 appeared first on EcoSalon.