I’ve started to become a lot more aware of my day-to-day contact with chemicals so I thought I would have a look into the types of chemicals used in food and drinks packaging and containers. Colleagues in the office tend to reuse plastic bottles to get their fill at the water cooler. I, on the other hand, use a glass. I even stopped taking a water bottle to the gym and instead drink straight from the water fountain. It’s partly because I was worried about germs but seeing as I only wash my office glass maybe twice a week that’s obviously not my main motivation. It’s more the fact that I think we are far too reliant on plastics without fully understanding how they may affect our health.

It has been suggested that chemicals can leach out of plastics to then be consumed into our bodies through whatever we are eating or drinking from a plastic container. Do you remember a few years ago women in particular were told not to drink water from a bottle that had been heated up in the sun? That’s because bisphenol A (BPA), which has been linked to breast cancer due to its hormone disrupting traits, leaches out of plastics 55 times faster when exposed to hot liquids. I started doing a bit of research and it does seem that BPA has evoked the greatest cause for concern. It is used to make plastic cups transparent and shatterproof so found particularly in babies’ bottles; it’s also used to line the inside of food cans.

It’s difficult as plastics have only been used on mass since the 1960s so we can’t be sure of their long term impact on our bodies. Scientific studies have found consistent, yet very small levels of BPA in our bodies suggesting that yes, we do consume it through our diet. An article in The Independent earlier this year flagged up this very issue and includes a list of where BPA may be used, including on till receipts. There are many other types of plastic so we do have a choice, although choice does make life more confusing I find.

Most water and soft drinks bottles are made from PET which is deemed safe by the majority of scientists (as far as I have found). The concern for plastics mainly comes from reuse as the material deteriorates. Repeated use of plastics increases the chance that chemicals can leach out of the tiny cracks which we wouldn’t see by eye. Health advocates however, recommend not reusing PET bottles although they do believe they are safe for one-time use. Luckily there are alternatives including bottles made from HDPE plastic, low density polyethylene, stainless steel and aluminium. You can get stainless steel and aluminium bottles from plenty of sports and outdoors stores, department stores and healthy/ethical living stores, see One Green Bottle and Sigg (I like this one!).

Whilst it’s hard to know what to do for the best, and even harder to avoid plastics all together, here are some simple things you can do based on what I’ve read to date:

• Avoid BPA – marked plastic #7 (see the article in The Independent)
• Drink from a glass at home and in the office, not a plastic cup
• Invest in a stainless steel water bottle for outings
• Use microwavable glass containers to warm food in the microwave rather than plastic
• Don’t leave half a can of food in the tin once opened – transfer it to a glass bowl and leave in the fridge

It got me thinking about the paint used on the inside of mugs too, anyone have any ideas about the safety of that?

Sports brands regularly come under fire for producing their goods in unethical circumstances. This makes concerned consumers particularly uncomfortable I think, because the brands in question charge top dollar for their fancy footwear and instead of passing this profit onto the factory workers they pay huge sums to their executives and spend millions on shiny advertising campaigns. Research from the international campaign Playfair found workers in China who were employed by Adidas suppliers earned as little as £20 per month making sports shoes which cost up to £50 a pair. So if I wanted to avoid these companies and I didn’t want to source my trainers second-hand, what were my options?

VEJA immediately sprung to mind; a brand I had heard about but not seen up close. Veja is a French brand who produces ethical trainers, bags and purses for men, women and kids. They use organic cotton, wild Amazonian rubber and eco-tanned leather in their products, whilst keeping their carbon footprint to a minimum. I bought the Grama, a simple sneaker shoe in blue. I particularly liked the sound of wild Amazonian rubber. The Amazon is the only place on earth where rubber trees grow in the wild. Veja work with Amopreab, an association of Seringeiros – ‘the rubber tappers’ who live in the forest and harvest from the trees.

They work better as fashion shoes rather than sports shoes. I won’t be running in them but I wanted them for fitness (toning) classes where I needed a less chunky shoe. What I REALLY wanted were these lovelies – the Greg Asner printed high tops. Greg Asner is a Stanford scientist who travels to the furthest corners of the Amazon rainforest and creates a novel way of mapping unknown species with photography, the shoes make use of one of his pictures.

I bought mine direct from Veja but you can also get them on ASOS.

*wanted

My blog has evolved since first inception but not massively (I’m still totally indebted to Mike and Mic for helping me set it up, thank you boys!). It started as purely an ethical fashion site but I have since posted on various sustainability issues. Still though, I feel a bit limited in what I feel I can talk about despite the fact that in some ways I’ve become more interested in the ethical part rather than the fashion part of ethical fashion. Many of the blogs I really enjoy reading include interiors, foodie posts and organic living.

So am I going to stop blogging about ethical fashion? (whatever ethical/eco/sustainable fashion may be) No. But I am changing tack. I’m in the very, very early stages of developing a new website, and this will be a website not a blog. It will cover all kinds of ethical consumption topics, but in a way relevant to the average shopper (there, I said it, I have to do it now). This is some time off though and I don’t want to give much away to be honest, why spoil the surprise! This blog (back to the one you’re reading) will therefore be more about me, my life and anything to do with ethical and sustainable living that takes my fancy. Me is my PhD, my newly purchased flat, yoga, health and fitness, fashion and textiles, food and second-hand/old stuff. I’ll still be an ethical fashion chic, that’s part of the package, but I also have the platforms of the Oxfam fashion blog and Ms Wandas Wardrobe to talk about that, both of which I’m a regular contributor to.

Ethical/sustainable living is in essence what I will be writing about, so just like it is now, but with pictures of cake amongst the clothes. It’s quite new to me too, this ethical/sustainable living stuff, so I want to do a bit of exploring. I’m the ultimate supermarket convenience shopper and it’s only recently that I’ve grasped much context of what fruit and veg even cost, I’d just chuck it in the trolley. It’s difficult when you live in a tiny flat with no garden and money is greatly limited but I want to start thinking more about where my food is coming from, and rely less on chemical cleaners and plastics. I picked up this organic living book in Oxfam which I’m using as a starting point. It tells you how to make organic beauty products, natural cleaners, how to grow fruit and veg and erm, keep a cow. I’m not giving up my make-up though, oh no.

Anyone got any tips? (on organic living, not keeping a cow)

Cake!

Swishing/swapping parties have taken off big time over the last couple of years. Giving the opportunity for people to swap clothes that they don’t wear for clothes that they do is a fab idea. It’s sustainable and quite often totally free (although some parties might charge an entry fee, often donated to charity). What’s more, if you took part in one of the recent Shwopping events by Marks and Spencer’s and Oxfam, you will have received a £5 M&S voucher, amazing!

The One Day Wardrobe Clear Out was held on Thursday 9th May and asked customers to help ease the landfill burden by bringing their unwanted clothes into M&S to swap for pieces donated by other customers. 435,000 used and unwanted items were shwopped over 12 hours – the equivalent of 604 items a minute.

The event, as part of M&S and Oxfam’s sustainable fashion initiative Shwopping, will see every item left donated go on to be re-sold or recycled by the charity, cutting waste and raising much-needed funds in its fight against global poverty. The record number of items shwopped will raise an estimated £504,600 for Oxfam.

Adam Elman, Head of Marks & Spencer’s Plan A Delivery, said:
“It’s amazing to see so many people taking part and shwopping their clothes to support Oxfam. 435,000 clothes donated is a fantastic achievement; this is by far the most successful clothes-recycling event we have ever had! It doesn’t stop here, with over 1 billion items sent to landfill each year in the UK, we hope that customers will continue to adopt a ‘buy one, give one back’ culture when they shop and help us to build a more sustainable future.”

Since its launch in April last year, Oxfam has received over 4.3 million items of clothing thanks to Shwopping, worth over £2.8 million for the charity. All money raised by Shwopping, fronted by Joanna Lumley, is used to support Oxfam’s projects around the world. Don’t forget to check out the Oxfam Fashion blog and remember you can shop for Oxfam pieces online.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time researching London’s best charity shops. There are loads of great ones; you just need to know where to look. Yes prices are inflated in the capital, but there’s a much higher concentration of designer pieces and fabulous vintage finds so I was delighted to get invited to the launch night of the newly refurbished boutique style charity shop by Octavia Foundation.

If you don’t live or work in London you’re unlikely to have heard of Octavia Foundation but they are a fantastic charity that work across London to improve people’s lives. Some of their work includes:

• Facilitating assistance and friendship for older and vulnerable people through Garden Guardians, a handyman service, lunch clubs and day centres, and outreach and befriending.
• Working with young people and children through youth centres, arts and sports programmes.
• Helping local people with jobs and training through Westminster Works, Future Foundations and apprenticeships.
• Providing advice on money management, welfare benefits and debt.

Octavia Foundation have around twenty charity shops across the capital. The Fulham Road store that I visited last Thursday is small but packed full of amazing finds. It has a boutique vibe with exposed brick walls, a spacious changing room and thoughtful displays. On the event launch night they had 130 guests through the door, who in total spent £2500. The money raised will be used to help local people during times of difficulty or crisis.

After having a good rummage around the store I bought a Moschino Cheap & Chic printed silk circle skirt and my friend bought a gorgeous floor length corset dress. They had a Burberry cream trench coat, perfect condition, for just over £300 – a great buy for somebody but sadly my budget didn’t stretch that far! They also had Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahnik stilettos and a Marc Jacobs handbag. This is a real destination shop; I will certainly be visiting again!

Clothes on offer at Octavia Foundation

Bumped into fellow Oxfam blogger Ron from Dresses on a Clothes Line!

I very nearly bought these red shoes . . .

But instead I bought this skirt

Moschino Cheap & Chic silk skirt, charity shop £36.
Jacket, Topshop

My friend Sandeep’s corset dress

When I first heard about this, my primary emotion (perhaps surprisingly) wasn’t sadness, but anger. As the death toll rose and I watched footage on the TV, the anger dissipated to deep sadness and despair. It isn’t the first disaster in a Bangladeshi clothing factory, in the last eight years alone 1000 people have died in similar incidents and fires, but it is the worst to date. My only hope is that the disaster acts as a wake-up call for the industry, and for western consumers. It’s all too easy to detach yourself from where your clothes are made, but the truth is any one of us could have clothing in our wardrobes made and touched by the hand of someone who died that day. I certainly don’t want to have blood on my hands.

I’m glad the press have taken to this story, I mean of course they would, it’s world news, it would have been pretty hard for the British public to have missed it. The Financial Times challenged the world’s retailers to start using their ‘economic muscle’ to fight for change for properly enforced safety standards in factories, although, as pointed out by The New York Times, this isn’t easy when 10% of the parliamentary seats in Bangladesh are held by factory owners and their families. The retailers involved in sourcing from the Rana Plaza complex have been named and shamed by the press, after coming forward themselves with statements. Benetton had had an order completed by one of the factories housed there some weeks before, stating in a press release that it had be subcontracted out to the factory by one of its other suppliers.

Subcontracting is a massive problem. Often the factories visited by UK buyers and merchandisers are nice enough, like the one below visited by my colleague Ellie Tighe (read Ellie’s comment to ITV news here). It’s when orders are outsourced that the greatest problems occur, and whilst this isn’t the retailers fault per say, they do have a responsibility to fully audit and trace their supply chains. Retailers can’t continue to shift the blame to subcontractors; they should know what each supplier’s capacity is and what their workload is.

Dhaka Clothing Factory Copyright: Ellie Tighe

What can consumers do?

So what can we do? I hope a number of people are contemplating this very question in light of the tragic events. Should we boycott clothes made in Bangladesh? Personally, I have certainly tried to avoid anything made in Bangladesh for the last couple of years, and I do boycott Primark for promotion of fast fashion, but avoiding the high street all together is tough. David Blair, commenting in The Telegraph advocates a boycott of Primark and its owners, Associated British Foods, placing the responsibility firmly with the consumer.

But Bangladesh is the second largest exporter of clothing in the world, if we stop buying it, what will happen to those workers? The working conditions and wages may seem anything from less than favourable to utterly appalling from our standards, but things are slowly improving in many instances. Clearly, less developed countries have a different measuring stick to us; what I have a problem with is Western retailers and consumers exploiting this for their own gain. We do not need this cheap, fast fashion. We are well clothed. People should not be dying so that we can buy a little t-shirt for the same price as a large frothy coffee.

Labour Behind the Label have a quick and easy guide to shopping more ethically here.