The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
b-side
Thursday, October 17, 2019 — 3B

Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta 
Thunberg has been making big headlines with 
her environmental activism, even making 
the cover of Time Magazine. Thunberg looks 
stunning on the cover, a green and ruffled 
dress falling perfectly over her small frame, 
making her look more mature than her usual 
hoodie and jeans ensemble — somebody to be 
taken seriously. 
I was shocked to see where Time got this 
beautiful garment. The photographer, Hellen 
van Meene, simply said she found it in an 
outlet store in Copenhagen, Denmark. While 
I was not expecting Thunberg to make an 
appearance in a piece from the latest Versace 
Spring/ Summer 2020 collection — although 
the blue-green foliage accents would have 
probably had a similar earthy vibe — I had 
thought that if she were to participate in any 
sort of fashion statement, it would be a plea for 
a more sustainable fashion industry. 
Fashion is one of the largest major 
polluting industries in theworld. So why 
don’t we include fashion in the conversation 
on climate change? Perhaps because there 
does not seem to be enough research or data 
to beconvincingto some? Or perhaps because 
fashion is so personal — we literally carry it on 
our backs every single day. 
But with the rise of designers like Stella 
McCartney, the poster woman for sustainable 
fashion, and Gabriela Hearst, the first 
designer to put on a carbon neutral fashion 
show, the new and upcoming trend in fashion 
is sustainability. 
Furthermore, MUD Jeans, a Netherlands 
denim brand and certified B-corporation (a 
professional certification for sustainable for-
profits), is one of many fashion companies 
that 
dedicate 
their 
business 
model 
to 
environmental consciousness. MUD’s vision 
is impactful in consideration of how denim 
is a large part of the fashion industry. The 
production of denim is also a major polluter — 
from the growing of cotton to the dying of the 
fabric and shipping of clothing. 
“We’ve lost the true cost of a pair of jeans 
or a jacket. We don’t calculate the real cost of 
the price of a clothing item into the shops,” 
CEO of MUD Jeans Bert van Son said in an 
interview with The Daily. “We want to make 
money, but at no volatile cost to humanity or 
to the planet.”
The well-known documentary “The True 
Cost” highlights this major shift from making 
clothing on sewing machines in your own home 
to fast fashion. Fast fashion, made popular by 
stores like Zara and Forever 21, seemed like 
an intoxicating fantasy to fashion companies. 
In this increasingly connected world, where 
the speed of producing and buying products is 
becoming more important, how do we quickly 
produce clothing that is readily accessible to 
the public? 
The answer from companies like Zara was 
to exploit laborers in developing countries and 
produce clothes using unsustainable practices. 
This included using cheaper, toxic dye, 
throwing out instead of recycling water and 
buying fabric crops, such as cotton, that are 
full of pesticides. The subsequent expansion 
of the fashion industries — producing clothes 
in China, sourcing cotton from India, shipping 
finished products to the United States — has 
increased our individual carbon footprints. 
“We’ve seen all the beautiful sides of the 
fashion industry and we’ve made it into 
throwaway, one-wear, low-quality things. 
What a shame,” van Son said. 
Companies 
like 
van 
Son’s 
came 
up 
with solutions to the environmental and 
humanitarian crises made by fast fashion. His 
solution was to look at every step of making a 
pair of jeans and to improve it by finding ways 
to lower its environmental impact. 
“24 billion kilos of cotton are grown every 
year. If we would all use 40 percent recycled 
cotton, it’s fantastic for the planet,” van Son 
explained. MUD Jeans does everything from 
using post-consumer cotton in their products 
to localizing the sourcing and shipping of their 
products to Europe to decrease their carbon 
footprint.

“For every step of making jeans, we try to do 
something else. But that’s not good enough,” 
van Son explained. MUD Jeans has its 
customers actively participate in making the 
company sustainable. You can either ship an 
old pair of jeans to MUD when you buy a new 
pair from them, or lease a new pair of jeans 
for a year or so. When the latest and newest 
jean trend comes onto the scene, customers 
can ship MUD their leased pair of jeans to 
exchange for the newest style. 
However, the choice to be a more sustainable 
fashion company comes with a major trade-
off. 
“The margin we make is lower than all of 
my competitors,” van Son said. For every step, 
from recycling water used in the process of 
making fabric to using post-consumer cotton, 
the company needs to invest more money. 
This means that their clothing becomes more 
expensive and the business has to be careful 
to make sure they have enough money to pay 
their workers, rent out their office spaces and 
keep making a profit. 
For companies that want to become more 
sustainable, this can be even more difficult. 
Convincing shareholders to make changes 
in order to become more environmentally 
friendly at a financial loss is no simple task. 
So where does the final responsibility to 
sustainable fashion lie? 
“You 
need 
three 
parties. 
You 
need 
companies doing this, the consumer starting 
to get more conscious, and you also need the 
government to install rules to help companies 
like ours to be more interesting,” van Son 
explained. “We can only do this with a team 
of high motivated people that are going for the 
same cause”
There are many solutions I can offer to 
those who feel helpless in this major issues. 
Try apps such as Good on You that evaluate 
and lay out the environmental impact of 
clothing companies. 
Do research. Research what your favorite 
clothing brands are doing to minimize their 
environmental impact. 
Money speaks. Put money toward companies 
whose values align with yours. Your individual 
dollar makes a difference because others will 
see and also want to make a difference. 
Lastly, vote. Vote for representatives, 
senators, mayors, governors and presidents 
who care about changing climate change. Call 
up your local government office and ask them 
if they’ve ever considered creating policies 
to support sustainable fashion practices in 
major companies. If they haven’t, make them 
think about it and act accordingly. If it matters 
to you, it should matter to our government 
officials. 

Making a definitive case
for sustainable fashion

ISABELLE HASSLUND
Daily Community Culture Editor

COURTESY OF MUD JEANS

B-SIDE: STYLE NOTEBOOK

In 2018, indie weirdos Animal Collective 
decided to collaborate with art-science duo 
Coral Morphologic in order to celebrate the 
International Year of the Reef, an initiative to 
protect coral reefs across the globe. The result of 
the collaboration was Tangerine Reef, an audio-
visual project in which all the members of Animal 
Collective except Panda Bear made the music 
(obviously) and the members of Coral Morphologic 
created a film that attempted to make the coral 
human-like, and thus more relatable to people.
Tangerine Reef wasn’t exactly impactful, at least 
in terms of awareness raised. Animal Collective 
did not include any sort of environmental message 
in their music. Hell, I don’t think they even 
bothered to mention coral in any of the songs. 
Instead, they created background music intended 
to put focus on Coral Morphologic’s work, which 
made a successful attempt at presenting coral in a 
way that proves it is a living, functioning organism 
and not just a zany-looking mineral deposit laying 
around on the bottom of the ocean. This is all well 
and good, but, unfortunately, not much came of 
this collaboration.
The audio aspect of the collaboration far 
overshadowed the visual aspect, which was a 
shame because the work Coral Morphologic did 
was groundbreaking and beautiful, and Animal 
Collective’s work was hypnotically numbing. 
Perhaps fairly, Animal Collective received a 
majority of the press, and any mention of Coral 
Morphologic and International Year of the Reef 
was nothing more than a quick aside. What’s more, 
most individuals ended up only listening to Animal 
Collective’s contribution in full without watching 

the accompanying film. Sure, Animal Collective 
pledged to donate a portion of Tangerine Reef’s 
proceeds to coral reef conservation efforts from 
the Ocean Foundation, Project Coral and Oceana, 
but when one aspect of the project receives all the 
press (neutral to negative press at that) it’s hard to 
feel good about projects like these.
Animal Collective, despite their intentions, 
did the bare minimum to be a part of this project. 
They merely made another album, a mediocre 
one, and sent it to Coral Morphologic for them to 
figure out how to implement. With the AC name 
attached, the project was sure to get press, but 
Animal Collective’s lack of effort drove audiences 
away, many unaware of Coral Morphologic’s 
contribution. 
Had 
the 
music 
been 
more 
captivating and its subject matter more pertinent, 
perhaps Tangerine Reef would have raised some 
serious awareness, but sadly, that isn’t the case.
The project was unsuccessful, and Animal 
Collective is to blame. The bottom line is, if a 
mixed media project like this is to be successful 
and spread a message, both sides need to make 
sure they adequately work to spread that message. 
Learn from Animal Collective’s mistake; it could 
do a lot to help our planet.
If a project like this were to be done again, 
perhaps the artists should release only the joint 
collaboration, rather than the collaboration and 
each individual contribution. That way, the entire 
project has to be experienced. In the case of 
Tangerine Reef, it would have been more effective 
to release in this manner. Coral Morphologic’s 
videography and Animal Collective’s music 
would be experienced in the way the artists and 
intended, and audiences would see that reefs are 
living and functioning. And maybe, just maybe, it 
would call attention to our poor treatment of reefs 
and the need for restoration and, at the very least, 
conservation.

Mediocrity isn’t awareness

JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer

B-SIDE: MUSIC NOTEBOOK

I am not an Indigenous person, nor am I First 
Nations. I acknowledge that I am writing this 
piece based solely on research and travel and do 
not represent the voices of Indigenous people 
across the world. However, I think it’s important 
that we listen to the experience and wisdom of 
Indigenous people in tackling an issue as large as 
climate change. As a nation, we have a lot to learn 
about our relationship with our surroundings. 
This past summer, I stopped by the Abbe 
Museum nestled in the middle of Bar Harbor, 
the largest town on Mount Desert Island, Maine. 
Mount Desert Island is more famously known 
for Acadia National Park, where I had spent the 
last three days hiking and exploring. Equally as 
important as national parks is the history of its 
land: Who originally inhabited this area of earth, 
and what are their stories? With this mindset, I 
stopped by the Abbe Museum on our last day in 
Bar Harbor, and a gentle, sloping cream-colored 
building with olive green trimmings welcomed 
me inside.
The Abbe Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate 
since 2013, is in collaboration with the Wabanaki, 
the 
People 
of 
the 
Dawn. 
The 
Wabanaki 
Confederacy includes the Abenaki, Maliseet, 
Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Nations, 
all of whom have inhabited what is now known as 
Maine and Southeastern Canada for generations. 
The Wabanaki are known as the People of the 
Dawn due to their location in Turtle Island (now 
known as North America); they are the first 
people to see the sunrise over Turtle Island, and 
thus the first to see the dawn. 
Visiting the Abbe Museum made me rethink 
my environmental education thus far. I’d only 
learned about white, eurocentric environmental 
pioneers in middle and high school; names 
like Aldo Leopold, John Muir and Theodore 
Roosevelt may sound familiar to you. But what 
about Indigenous pioneers, who have lived in 
harmony with the environment for centuries to a 
much greater extent than settlers ever have? 
This is all part of a larger process of 
decolonizing 
environmental 
history 
and 
climate change, which, among other goals, 
includes understanding that Western ways 
of 
environmental 
thinking 
and 
teaching 
often overshadow perspectives of Indigenous 
people. Indigenous people around the world 
are protecting forests and their biodiversity, 

which sequesters carbon and protects natural 
resources. Indigenous people can teach us how 
to live sustainably through their agricultural 
practices, having depended on the environment 
their 
whole 
lives. 
Indigenous 
people 
are 
protesting against large oil companies and 
deforestation, recognizing that these practices 
contribute to increased worldwide greenhouse 
gas emissions. 
We can all learn from Indigenous perspectives 
on our climate crisis, and the Abbe Museum is no 
exception. The exhibit “wolankeyutomon: Take 
Care of Everything” focused on the conservation 
of sea life and emphasized the Wabanaki’s 
relationship with whales and other maritime 
creatures. The whale of Maine appears in 
Wabanaki stories as Bootup, whose back allowed 
for travel across the Western Atlantic, waters that 
are sacred to the Wabanaki. Whales have been 
poached and harpooned by humans for many 
years. Recently an equally alarming problem has 
come to light: the discovery of whales washed to 
shore with stomachs full of plastic products. 
There was a painting at the museum that 
immediately caught my eye when I stepped into 
the exhibit, and for good reason. There are very 
few ways to misinterpret the message conveyed: 
Single-use plastics are threatening our marine 
biodiversity, including whales, one of the most 
ancient species on this earth. The Ziploc bag that 
you casually toss in the trash, the plastic fork that 
is thrown away instead of reused, the plastic bag 
that you insist is more convenient than a reusable 
one: All of this contributes to the problem. 
Too often, I’ve come across the perspective 
that climate change can only be solved by 
large corporations changing their methods of 
production. Yes, a huge part of the problem lies 
with big oil and political lobbying. But another 
part lies with our flawed understanding of what 
we can do, individually and collectively, to help 
the environment. Grassroots change is hard, but 
it can spread like wildfire if you allow it to. 
Undoubtedly, Indigenous people are welcome 
to these changing habits and have a breadth of 
knowledge to contribute to our understanding 
of the environment. A small panel tucked in 
the back of the Abbe Museum allowed visitors 
to input their personal commitments to help 
the environment on an iPad with the responses 
being projected continually on a large screen 
above. There’s more to this climate crisis than 
we think and spreading information from 
different cultures and ways of life is critical to 
our relationship with this planet.

On decolonizing the planet

TRINA PAL
Senior Arts Editor

B-SIDE: COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

With the rise of 
designers like Stella 
McCartney, the 
posterwoman for 
sustainable fashion, 
and Gabriela 
Hearst, the first 
designer to put on 
a carbon neutral 
fashion show, the 
new and upcoming 
trend in fashion is 
sustainability.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS / DOMINO RECORDING COMPANY

