Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Fashion
The Sundance Channel
Air date: May 6, 2008, 9pm EST

When thinking of environmentally friendly activities to include in their daily routines, most people will likely consider the more common things like recycling, decreasing auto emissions and air pollution, taking public transportation when possible, using energy saving light bulbs, etc. All of these are extremely important and making them priorities will contribute to keeping our planet green and healthy.

The fact is that all of our daily activities should be made with the environment in mind. This is the idea behind the Sundance Channel’s weekly environmental series, The Green. For instance, most people don’t relate fashion choices to the environment. Tonight’s episode of Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Fashion focuses on fashion and tells us why something as seemingly innocent as buying a pair of jeans does have a significant impact on the environment.

Many people have an obvious love affair with clothing, but what most people are not aware of is that making and maintaining our clothing is one of the biggest sources of pollution, endangers the health of workers, and exposes our skin to toxins. Did you know that cotton accounts for 25% of the world’s pesticides?! These pesticides soak into the soil and the clothing fabrics, so they affect us in multiple ways.

In this episode, we meet Tierra Forte, founder of Del Forte Denim, a company that makes organic women’s denim. Forte says that her products allow a person to combine their desire to look good with their values in mind. Organic cotton production does not use pesticides. Instead, crop rotation and naturally occurring pest predators are used. Also, in place of dyes that wind up in our streams and water ways and harm the environment, organic clothing makers use environmentally friendly processes like hand sanding in producing their products.

Dry cleaning is another environmentally harmful act. The chemicals used are extremely toxic and have been known to cause cancer as well as respiratory and skin problems. Also, let us not forget the large amount of plastic used in dry cleaning. This episode introduces us to the method of organic dry cleaning, as implemented by Rusty Perry, co-founder of Revolution Cleaners. Organic dry cleaners are now becoming more popular and using non-toxic cleaners that work just as well.

Some things we can do when making fashion choices include:

• buy clothes made of organic materials
• buy long lasting clothing that can be passed down or donated
• look for environmentally friendly dry cleaners and request that your local dry cleaner use non-toxic cleaners like liquid CO2.
• reuse dry cleaning bags
• use non-toxic laundry detergents made by companies such as Seventh Generation. Some of the bigger name brands are also beginning to market such items.

Watch The Green tonight on Sundance at 9pm EST. For more information, visit their website at www.sundancechannel.com/thegreen