I’ve been ranting about plastics for the past three weeks, and you might be wondering why, especially since we’re in the fabric business. Well, the chance is that most of the fabrics you buy are either 100% synthetic (polyester, acrylic, nylon, etc.) or they’re blended with natural fibers – such as the very popular cotton/polyester …
I was going to go on to other subjects, but just saw in the Seattle Times that the whale that washed up on a West Seattle beach last month was discovered to have 3.2 lbs. of garbage in its belly – including 20 plastic bags and 37 other kinds of plastic (read entire article here.) …
In Plastics, Part 1 (last week’s post; click here to read it) I tried to give a summary of why plastics are not such a good thing. The Plastic Pollution coalition has a list of basic concepts about plastic. Click here to read the expanded version: Plastic is forever Plastic is poisoning our food chain …
Philosopher George Carlin once said, “Man is only here to give the planet something it didn’t have: Plastic.” And man has done well: plastic is ubiquitous in our world today and the numbers are growing. We produce 20 times more plastic today than we did 50 years ago. The production and use of …
I remember the spring of 1970 vividly, but not because of the first Earth Day. I remember that Richard Nixon was president, Simon & Garfunkle’s “Bridge over Troubled Waters” was playing on the radio and the Flip Wilson Show was on TV. The academy award for best movie went to “Patton”. (Actually I had to …
Earth Day is coming up and I am having a hard time with climate change. It’s such a big, complicated issue. Climate change, according to Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED), is inherently abstract, scientifically complex, and globally diffused in causes and consequences. People have a hard time grasping the concept, let …
It looks like the plastic bottle is here to stay, despite publicity about bisphenol A and other chemicals that may leach into liquids inside the bottle. Plastic bottles (which had been used for some kind of consumer product) are the feedstock for what is known as “post consumer recycled polyester”. Recycled polyester, also called rPET, …
Chris Wood – an independent journalist living on Vancouver Island, Canada, wrote an article in Miller-McCune about China’s cotton problem. Most of the information here is taken from his article. You can read the complete article here. Clients often ask us where our fabrics and/or fibers come from because, they tell us, they don’t want …
Here we are in the 21st century, with its acute global issues of over-population, loss of natural habitat, carbon emissions and pollution of all kinds — in a nutshell the specter of diminishing resources and climate change. What’s a good architect to do? Some are saying that fabric structures – that ancient way of providing …
This week I’m digressing just a bit from textiles, because I just read Amy Goodman’s column about what the search for natural gas and oil is doing to us. My eyes were opened and I want to share! Almost everybody agrees that if we’re going to curb our greenhouse gas emissions we have to find …
OEcotextiles 