Why a Socially Responsible Business Model?
Labor Injustices
While many of us know sweatshops exist or that farm workers are being treated unfairly in the US and globally, most fail to recognize the direct impact of our purchases in perpetuating these trends. Globally, over 32 million people work in clothing manufacturing plants, with millions more working in mills producing fabrics inherent in our lives, such as seating, drapes, and carpeting. Beyond the low pay, numerous accounts document workers being forced to work long hours in dangerous and unhealthy working conditions.
Dangers of Pesticides
Pesticide poisoning is a major risk among agricultural workers in developing countries, where up to 14% of all occupational injuries in the agricultural sector and 10% of all fatal injuries can be attributed to pesticides. Cotton production is particularly hazardous, as cotton growers use many of the most hazardous pesticides on the market, including aldicarb, phorate, methamidophos and endosulfan. Typically organophosphates, a group of broad spectrum pesticides that were developed as a toxic nerve agent for WWII, are used in cotton production.
Power of Conscious Consumerism:
By consciously choosing products that promote a fair, sustainable economy, as consumers we force all business toward accountability. By taking into consideration, before we make another purchase, the hidden and future costs behind unsustainable products—such as unfair and unsafe daily working conditions in factories through the world, chemical poisonings, hazardous waste disposal, carcinogenic materials in our everyday products and correlated increased health care costs, and the environmental impact on current and future generations—we ensure our own well-being while achieving a global society where we uplift through our actions and questions.
We believe strongly in the need for vibrant local economies if we want to move globally into a sustainable future. Whether it is by promoting local arts events or sustainable local food systems, we support organizations and individuals working to create healthy and happy homegrown work within the community.
What else is different?
You have our guarantee that every item we create is hand dyed and printed using traditional techniques. This is not just our way of making ASK Apparel products more special to each consumer, it is part of a broader mission to cultivate diversity – not homogeneity – in every one of our products. Current industrial practices, whether in textiles, chemical sector, agriculture, or any other mass produced product must be standardized based on uniformity standards that require goods to be homogeneous and palatable to all. This often comes at the expense of taste, craftsmanship, or environmental health and safety. For example, this industry imposed need for homogeneity is what leads to the over application of pesticides in agriculture, dousing of foods with MSG and other industrial compounds in the food processing industry, or the total bleaching of fibers prior to dyeing and printing in the textile industry. At ASK Apparel, we seek to respect and cultivate diversity. That means we won’t exploit nature and overuse chemicals trying to make every item the same, instead making one-of-a-kind a niche to be sought after, not an exception to be covered up.
Small is beautiful.
Small and natural affords us some additional benefits which allow us to move from beyond our work as artisans to partnering with ecologists, farmers, and other innovators to bring our business to the next stage of sustainability. To develop an environmentally sustainable production method, we seek to eliminate the concept of waste, and therefore of pollution, from our processes. By using only healthful, safe materials, we prevent toxic materials from accumulating not only on your garment, but in the by-products of our production processes. This allows the end products that don’t go on to the consumer, what is typically thought of as industrial waste, to take on a new life. In our case, it means creating a number of practices designed to “close the loop” on our material flow and eliminate the concept of waste. We take a multi-faceted approach to downsizing and recycling our waste stream internally. At first, this means continuing to extract pigments from dye baths that would have been “spent” in the eyes of a larger producer, since our small, one of a kind approach allows for natural color variation and progression. Since natural dyeing is more of an art than science, we are able to test and experiment, adding some more plant material to revitalize a dye pot for example, without fear of adverse chemical reactions and a tremendous potential for a new, unique color. However, our avoidance of hazardous chemicals allows us to do something far beyond reusing spent dye stuff. We seek to turn this year’s waste product into next year’s colors. While we strive to minimize them, our business creates byproducts that can no longer be reused. With this waste we create next year’s nutrients, composting it in such a way that our dye stuff, pastes, mordants, and washing materials safely biodegrade and are reduced to carbon and nitrogen at the bottom of a hot compost pile! This compost, in turn, fertilizes our farm of dye plants, which includes plantings of Japanese indigo, madder, weld, woad, dyer’s broom, and numerous flowers for use in our dye studio and community workshops.
We continue to ask ourselves what more we can do to improve our environmental and social practices and know we are in no way perfect. In taking our guidance from the earth and its cycles, we know that reintegration, rebirth, and respect for all things lead to a sustainable future. We seek to add diversity, responsibility, and style to a new niche of the ecosystem, one in which business is natural, connected, and committed to its surroundings.
We hope you will join us as we seek to Ask the right questions, wear the right answers.
Links
Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). Problems with Conventional Cotton Production.