Our previous blog post we talked about fabric – how to determine the quality of the fabric you’re considering for your new sofa. But the most important consideration merits a blog all its own, and that is the safety of the fabrics you’ve chosen. We define “safe” as a fabric that has been processed with …
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 …
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, …
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, …
I ran into some interesting ideas that seem to display why we should not immediately discredit new science – like genetic engineering or nanotechnology – because it might well provide clues to how we can continue to live on this planet. So rather than taking a global stand against GMOs or nanotechnology perhaps we should …
Global climate change is the major environmental issue of current times. Evidence for global climate change is accumulating and there is a growing consensus that the most important cause is humankind’s interference in the natural cycle of greenhouse gases. (Greenhouse gases get their name from their ability to trap the sun’s heat in the earth’s …
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 …
What are Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) that we hear so much about? Simply, they are chemicals which are carbon-based (hence the “organic” in the name, as organic chemistry is the study of carbon containing compounds) and which volatilize – or rather, evaporate or vaporize – at ordinary (atmospheric) temperatures. This is a very broad set …
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 …
OEcotextiles 