Specials

As the demand for near-shoring slowly gathers steam both for reasons of political compulsions and logistics issues, there is one country that is ready to make the best of it: Colombia. The country is both steeped in traditional textiles and is just as modern in its approach to environmental issues. But, can Colombia live up to the promise that the future holds? The first of a three-part WireFrame series from texfash.com.

Commodity prices have a direct bearing on farmer incomes, as do the prices that garment manufacturers are willing to pay for raw materials. Tamar Hoek, Senior Policy Director (Sustainable Fashion) at Solidaridad Network, disentangles the threads that make for these intricate relationships.

Garments traverse a complex global supply network by the time they reach stores thousands of miles away. Workers are caught in this web, exploited by factory management. Western brands escape the scrutiny of their governments by outsourcing production to low-cost countries and absolve themselves of direct responsibility. This complex system makes it hard to assign ethical responsibility, because everyone, and therefore no one, is guilty.

Multilateral government oversight of working conditions (at the point of production) combined with further regulations encouraging ethical supply chains (at the point of import), may be a more effective way to reduce the chances of another Rana Plaza.

What is needed is an international watchdog that puts more pressure on retailers to treat their supply chains fairly is an essential part of the puzzle. Until a regime is in place with genuine teeth to ensure retailers toe the line, the modern slavery behind high-street fashions will only continue.

Women still have some way to go in terms of perceptions of their work being based on their appearance. A continued shift in attitudes, not just corporate clothing, is still needed.

As the textile-apparel-fashion industry oscillates from greenwashing to greenhushing and greenblushing, a critical component of the backend is the dye. While it is becoming increasingly critical for manufacturers to shift to natural dyes, what also needs to be done is make them as popular as their synthetic counterparts and educate the customer about their basic goodness, mechanise dyeing and grow more raw materials so as to reduce the cost of the dyed product.

The call to reduce shedding of microfibres got stronger as A Plastic Planet, a pro-business, pro-solutions organisation, exhorts policymakers to mandate filters in new washing machines as the only effective, near-term solution to reduce the release of microplastics in the environment.

A research has found that although there was a 34% decrease in microplastics from pre-COVID levels in the Thames River during lockdown one, levels rose by 77% during the second in late 2020.

While the world scours for makers of natural dyes, here’s someone in India quietly greening the planet one step at a time in a low volume, high value business. The textile-apparel-fashion industry may stand up and take note, not just to source earth-friendly dyes but also pitch in with funding to help them do more for the people and the environment. texfash.com talks to the Co-Founder-Director of BioDye India Pvt Ltd, Dr Bosco MA Henriques, to bring you his voice from the Konkan region of the Western Ghats.