Fashion can be a grubby business: Seven spoons of chemicals are used to grow enough cotton to make just 1 t-shirt. Conventional cotton represents 3% of the world's crops, yet uses 25% of all insecticides and 10% of all pesticides. The chemical residue can still be present in our clothing so 'pure cotton' clothing is often anything but. And it's not just the environment that suffers, the chemicals poison the farmers and the cost of buying them leads to debt.
Pesticide Action Network
Over 14 million tonnes of synthetic fibre are produced each year - a massive increase from almost nothing 50 years' ago. Synthetic clothing is made from oil: an non-renewable resource that pollutes as it is extracted and never organically disintegrates.
CIRFS [International Rayon and Synthetic Fibres Committee]
Fibre is spun into yarn, yarn woven into fabric and fabric made into clothes in factories right across the planet. A garment, in the process of being made, may have been shipped and flown to three, four or even more countries leaving behind a toxic trail of energy consumption and polluting waste.
The dye industry is listed in India's 'hyper red' category reserved for the seventeen most polluting industries in the country where it lies alongside the oil, cement and steel industries.
The 40 million workers, mainly women, in the global textile trade are the ones that pay the price for our love of cheap clothing and fast fashion: long hours, poor wages, unsafe working conditions, no industrial reps, abuse, harassment, discrimination.These sweatshop conditions are well documented.
On average garment industry workers receive i wages just 0.5% of the retail cost of clothes sold in the high street!
Labour behind the Label
Small scale producers and traditional artisans are also losing out. 12 million people live by handloom weaving in India - the largest industry after farming. But now in many areas three out of four looms stand still, their owners sliding ever deeper into poverty and debt.
BBC News Report Sept 05
The problems don't end when a garment has been made. In the UK alone more than one million tonnes of textiles are thrown away every year.
Dr. J. Parfitt, WRAP, December 2002
But it doesn't need to be this way:
There are a good number of pioneering fashion brands trying to address or more of these issues, demonstrating that ethical fashion is possible. Brands that use organic cotton - kinder to the environment and the farmer.
Brands that trade fairly with small producers - supporting artisanal production, using the garment trade to overcome, not contribute to, poverty.
Brands that use alternative natural fibres: hemp, silk, nettle, flax - thus reducing the dependence on cotton and synthetics.
Brands that use recycled textiles and clothing - reducing our waste and saving the energy needed to create new materials.  Link to us. Get in Touch with us.  RSS feed (from the New Scientist Envirnonment)
| Ethical Fashion | All our suppliers meet our guidelines & provide to us products that include Ethical cotton including certified organic cotton, 100% merino wool products, recycled rubber, chemical free, and look after their workers. 
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| We have a NEW collection of ladies dresses, jeans, shoes, tops , lingerie, jackets, accessoriesplus shirt & blouses from ethical fashion houses like: Stewart & Brown, Patagonia, , & Peopletree. Dresses made from natural cotton products, wool or hemp, designer clothing from new and upcoming designers such as Ciel, Mumo, Alchem1st and Bono's fashion house at EDUN. Shoes made from recycled rubber and leather materials, see Terra Plana and Veja's selection, with some very cuddly looking slippers/ house shoes from Po-Zu. Our child & baby clothes, from Tatty Bumpkin and others, are made to be gentle, soft to the touch and natural, all are eco-friendly & free of nasty chemicals. |
| Summer Weather Alert!Summer was only a step away..so close!! So, instead of watching the rains come down why not, we would say this, browse some of the best ethical designer clothes available on the UK/World market right now, freshen your wardrobe, just in case the sun appears once more. There are plenty of new and beautiful eco clothes and ethical fashion items to keep you looking summery even when its not feeling it!  |  | | The EJF T shirt campaign has been launched to educate and raise money for the work that the Environmental Foundation do in order to help reduce and minimise environmental neglect and abuse; specifically stopping enforced child labour in cotton farming . Christian LaCroix, Luella, Betty Jackson and Katherine Hamnett have all put their names to them with KT Tunstall, Lilly Cole and Coco Rocha all wearing them See all the tee shirts |
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| Other DepartmentsPlease visit one of our other departments to find ethically mined gold & silver jewellery. Gifts for Christmas or a friends birthday, ethical gifts for the family, or a surprise present for your other half! Green UK believes that it is preferable for fashion to be ethical, organic and environmentally sound as well as both fashionable and very well made. In a way that gives rather than takes from the population and the earth; we require our suppliers to maintain the dignity of the people responsible for manufacturing our clothes, to pay fairly and operate in good conditions. You will find that some of our brands trade fairly with the producers whilst others have a focus on the environmental costs of growing and producing the fibres and fabric necessary for manufacture. Some brands do achieve both these objectives and many are aspiring to. We offer these pioneering brands to our customers from those suppliers which are tackling directly on one or more of the ethical issues involved in eco-friendly fashion production. 
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