OEcotextiles

Indulgent yet responsible fabrics

Time sure flies doesn’t it?  I’ve been promising to reiterate the effects the textile industry has on climate change, so I’m re-posting a blog post we published in 2013: In considering fabric for your sofa, let’s be altruistic and look at the impact textile production has on global climate change. (I only use the term …

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Climate change and Newtok

O Ecotextiles (and Two Sisters Ecotextiles)

How does this topic relate to the textile industry?   Well, it just so happens that the textile industry is huge – and a huge producer of greenhouse gasses.  The textile industry, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is the 5th largest contributor to CO2 emissions in the United States, after primary metals, nonmetallic mineral products, …

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Fabric and your carbon footprint

O Ecotextiles (and Two Sisters Ecotextiles)

In considering fabric for your sofa, let’s be altruistic and look at the impact textile production has on global climate change.  (I only use the term altruistic  because many of us don’t equate climate change with our own lives, though there have been several interesting studies of just how the changes will impact us directly, …

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Climate change and extreme weather

O Ecotextiles (and Two Sisters Ecotextiles)

I just saw this powerful video based on a recent editorial by Bill McKibben  in the Washington Post on May 23, 2011.   Narritation is  by Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia.com, who accompanies the piece with striking footage of the events Bill wrote about.

We published this blog almost two years ago, but the concepts haven’t changed and we think it’s very important.   So here it is again: Although most of the current focus on lightening our carbon footprint revolves around transportation and heating issues, the modest little fabric all around you turns out to be from an industry …

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From last week’s post, I explained that most people who want to buy a “green” sofa look at two major components:  the wood and the foam.  But our blog post demonstrated how your fabric choice can trump the embodied energy of both these components – in other words, depending on which fiber you choose, fabric …

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I just read the article by Team Treehugger on Planet Green on what to look for if you’re interested in green furniture. And sure enough, they talked about the wood (certified sustainable – but without any  explanation about why Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood should be a conscientious consumers only choice), reclaimed materials, design …

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The more I learn about organic farming the more impressed I become with the dynamics of it all.   As Fritz Capra has said, we live in an interconnected and self-organizing universe of changing patterns and flowing energy. Everything has an intrinsic pattern which in turn is part of a greater pattern – and all of …

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Elephants Among Us

O Ecotextiles (and Two Sisters Ecotextiles)

  Although most of the current focus on lightening our carbon footprint revolves around transportation and heating issues, the modest little fabric all around you turns out to be from an industry with a gigantic carbon footprint. The textile industry, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is the 5th largest contributor to CO2 emissions …

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The mass of  debris in the photo is, apparently, a tiny part of what the Wall Street Journal reports is afloat in the Pacific.   Nobody really knows how big it is:   “Some say it is about the size of Quebec, or 600,000 square miles — also described as twice the size of Texas. Others …

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