Living Like Ed (32 page)

6

CLOTHING AND HAIR AND SKIN CARE

ALL THE THINGS YOU PUT ON YOUR SKIN

Even people who are very aware of the food they eat—people who make it a point to eat only fresh, organic food—often aren’t aware of the choices they have when it comes to clothing and hair- and skin-care products.

In fact, most people just don’t realize the significance of things like organic clothing and organic shampoo. It sounds kind of out there, like some kind of crazy New Age stuff. But it’s not only what you put
into
your body that matters; what you put
onto
it matters just as much, too.

         I used to think Ed was just being Ed about all this stuff. What’s the big deal? But then I learned that the skin is our body’s largest organ, and because it’s porous, it’s absorbing stuff all the time. If medicine can be applied to the skin—hormone patches and that sort of thing—just imagine what else your skin is taking in. Studies on the effects of toxins in drinking water have actually found that people took in more of the toxins by
showering
in the water than by
drinking
it!

So contact with your skin—for ten, fifteen, maybe twenty hours in a day—is a big part of why the clothes you wear matter so much. And it’s not just your clothes, but all your lotions and shampoos and makeup—not to mention the air we breathe. Everything that comes in contact with your skin matters.

If you stop for just a minute and think about it, the same principles that apply to organic gardening and organic farming clearly should apply to the growing of crops used to make clothing and hair-care and skin-care products, too. Pesticides that are harmful to food and the ecosystem are just as harmful when they’re used on nonfood crops like cotton and lavender.

And then there are the synthetic materials used to make everything from clothing and shoes to makeup and sunscreen. Manufacturing these materials requires a lot of energy and natural resources—including problematic resources like petroleum—not to mention all the emissions from the manufacturing processes.

So there are real, measurable consequences for the environment—as well as for our bodies—when you choose what to wear and what to apply to your skin and hair. For that reason, it is doubly important to choose carefully and wisely when you shop for clothes and beauty products.

“Conventional” Clothing

If you’ve spent any time reading the labels on your pants and shirts and sweaters or dresses, you know most clothing these days is made of one or more of these materials:

Some of these materials are natural and some are synthetic. By definition the natural materials are found in nature and include cotton, silk, wool, linen, cashmere, and angora.

Cotton and linen both come from plants. Cotton obviously comes from the cotton plant—specifically, from fibers in the plant’s seedpod. Linen comes from fibers in the stalk of the flax plant.

Silk, wool, cashmere, and angora all come from animals. Silk is made from the cocoon of the silkworm. Wool is made from the fur of animals including sheep, goats, alpacas, and llamas, while angora, a specific kind of wool often used to make soft, furry sweaters, is made from rabbit fur. And cashmere is made from the cashmere goat’s fur.

Those are the most commonly used natural materials, and they are widely available. However, many fabrics combine natural fibers with other, synthetic fibers to give them more durability or other qualities. Many of the synthetics—including nylon, spandex, polyester, and acrylic—are petroleum-based thermoplastics. Plastics! They’re man-made substances manufactured in a lab, and they all contribute to our dependence on foreign oil.

Rayon and acetate are a little different from the other synthetics. They’re actually made from cellulose, which is wood fibers, so rayon and acetate will feel more like natural fibers, such as cotton or linen, but they’re still manufactured fibers that require a lot of water and energy to produce.

So which are the most environmentally friendly clothing choices? The answer is not always obvious.

Growing Cotton

Most people think of cotton as a sort of friendly fiber. It breathes. It’s washable. It comes from a renewable resource. If we need more fabric, we can just grow more cotton, right?

         I always wondered what the big deal was about organic cotton. Cotton is cotton, right? It wasn’t until very recently that I learned cotton is one of the most toxic plants on the planet—not because of the plant itself, but because of the boll weevil, a virulent pest that infests the cotton plant. Boll weevils are very hard to kill, and cotton farmers have to use all these pesticides to protect their crops. Eventually weevils become immune to a pesticide, mutating around it, like a cockroach, and the farmers have to find a brand-new pesticide. They keep adding pesticides and making them more intense until you have a crop with more pesticides used on it than anything else out there.

Rachelle’s right. Cotton is one of the most pesticide-laden crops in the world.

The obvious problem with pesticides is that they’re poisons. Moreover, they’re typically not highly targeted poisons, particularly those used in the growing of cotton. These pesticides work more like a shotgun blast than a sharpshooter’s bullet when it comes to killing insects. Instead of just killing the boll weevil, these pesticides wind up killing spiders and wasps and all kinds of other beneficial insects, putting the entire ecosystem out of whack. Eventually you have aphids multiplying like crazy and wreaking havoc on the cotton, because their natural predators have been destroyed, which in turn requires
more
pesticides.

Sadly, they work like a shotgun blast when it comes to their application as well. Thousands and thousands of farmers and farmworkers and children and animals have been made seriously ill—and have even been killed—by pesticide poisoning, even when the pesticides are applied in a way that’s 100 percent legal. When you’re flying an airplane over a field and dousing it with toxic chemicals, just a bit of a breeze can carry those chemicals for many yards or possibly miles. Even if you have people walking through the fields and spraying the pesticides directly onto the crops, those pesticides can be deadly for farmworkers as well as wildlife.

And it gets worse. Where does that pesticide go when the cotton field gets watered, or when it rains? Does it wind up in the streams? Does it wind up in the water table? Of course it does.

Does some of that pesticide wind up in the clothing made from that cotton? Probably. Most of it gets washed away as the fiber is cleaned and milled, but then where does that wastewater from the cleaning process go?

The bottom line is this: Why put all that poison out there?

Organic Cotton

Fortunately, organic cotton is a good alternative to pesticide-laden cotton. Organic cotton is just like organic broccoli. It’s grown without the use of synthetic pesticides, with attention to the ecosystem and biodiversity and the health of the land and the wildlife around it. By wearing organic-cotton clothes you are ensuring that you aren’t walking around in clothes full of residual pesticides, and you’re not supporting the introduction of more chemicals into the ecosystem. That’s why I always look for organic-cotton clothing.

Sure, it costs more. But how much more? A buck? Two? For a T-shirt that I’ll be wearing next to my skin for many years, even if it’s an extra five bucks, it’s worth it to me.

I consider it a very promising sign that some of the biggest retailers on the planet have gotten involved with organic cotton. Through its suppliers, Wal-Mart is fast becoming the biggest buyer of organic cotton in the world, buying more organic cotton in a single year than was sold
worldwide
just a few years ago. And you know if it’s being sold at Wal-Mart, it’s not expensive, so the cost factor is no longer an issue.

Organic Clothing

It’s important to point out that organic clothing is not just limited to cotton. You can also find organic clothing made from:

All of these fibers are natural, and all except silk and wool come from plants. Naturally, the plants would have to be farmed organically in order for their fibers to go into organic clothing.

Of those plant-based materials, hemp has been the most controversial. For years it was banned in the United States because
Cannabis sativa,
the plant whose stalk yields hemp fibers, also yields dried flowers and leaves that are better known as marijuana. Yet hemp is such a valuable fiber for making everything from rope to clothing that our Founding Fathers actually required people to grow hemp back in the 1600s. Today, organically grown hemp has become a staple of the organic-clothing industry.

Another natural fiber is jute, a relative of hemp that’s commonly used to make rope and twine and burlap sacks, as well as carpet backing and, to a lesser degree, clothing. Ramie, from the ramie plant, also known as China grass, is used to create a fabric that feels much like linen. And bamboo is a wonderful material. It’s one of the most sustainable resources, and it can be used to create a soft, silky fabric.

As for the animal-based materials, organic silk—or what’s sometimes called peace silk—is gathered from wild silkworms after the moths have emerged from their cocoons. Organic wool comes from sheep (and other animals) that have been raised in a sustainable, organic fashion.

While there is no official standard for labeling clothing
organic
just yet, most organic-clothing manufacturers—I won’t say
all,
but I sincerely hope all of them—also avoid the use of hazardous chemicals during the manufacturing process. By this I mean things like dyes and other chemical treatments that come in contact with the workers in the factory—and with your skin when you wear the clothing.

Whenever I buy new clothes, I always look for organic fabrics. I can’t find absolutely everything organic yet, but I always make a real effort to look for organic clothing of every kind. Does that mean you and I should throw out all our old nonorganic clothing? Of course not. Why would you fill a landfill with perfectly usable stuff?

I still have some old, nonorganic T-shirts that I’ll wear until they fall apart. And when they do fall apart, I’ll probably use them as rags so they can have a second life around the house or out in the garage.