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