The first step to making the clothing industry less impacting on the environment is by quantifying carbon emissions first, says Moshe Gadot from Bagir, the tailoring company that outfits 1 in 6 UK men. Think about your favorite suit and how it was made.
Chances are it flew on an airplane from China or Europe and visited several other countries and states before hanging in your closet. Or that eco-chic organic t-shirt. Maybe it was made with organic harvesting in mind, but how much water and energy did it take to create that simple shirt?
Well Bagir, which produces suits for the UK and the US in China, Egypt and Jordan, has decided to monitor and track the carbon emissions of its suits, so you don’t have to guess how much carbon emissions were produced in the process.
Bagir, best known for iPod suit and machine wash/tumble dry suit sold under the Sears Covington label, says they are now attempting to reduce their suits’ emissions by shipping more garments by sea rather than air.
Tailoring suits for Marks & Spencer, J.C. Penny, Brooks Brothers, Limited, come this Father’s Day, Bagir will start selling the world’s first recycled suit made from wool and PET bottles collected in Japan. The suit will also come with a carbon label – estimated value about 33 pounds (or about 15 kilograms).
Is that a lot or a little?
If you look at Carbon Catalog’s list of carbon offset providers, you can choose the country you are in and compare offset costs. In the US, at an average cost of about $10 per metric ton for offsets, we look at how much it would cost to offset a Bagir suit.
Multiply $10 by 0.015 tons, and the cost of offsetting a Bagir suit is quite negligible –– about 15 cents.
This company joins the new trend started by UK manufacturers to start labeling everything from chips to shampoo.
When Carbon Catalog spoke with Gadot, he assures that when it comes to being green, “we have a long way to go yet,” he says. Ultimately his dream is to see the clothing industry, and his company, recycle and repurpose previously used suits, thereby cutting down on the use of virgin materials – the most costly to the environment in the production process.
According to the New York Times, the outdoor clothing company Patagonia will also be providing carbon labels on its garments on its website, where it traces the journey of a $190 rain jacket from where it is designed in California to the fabric production facilities in Japan, to sewing in Vietnam, all the way to distribution Nevada, a grand total of 14,125 miles. See Footprint Chronicles.
Patagonia calculates that the carbon dioxide emissions generated is about 15 pounds (about 10 times the weight of the jacket itself).
Like the Energy Star rating you would find on a fridge, Gadot hopes that Bagir’s new carbon labels will give the company an advantage when people are comparative shopping. If given a choice, and at the same cost, he expects educated consumers will choose the one with the carbon label. “This will mean nothing to consumers, at least at first,” Gadot said in the Times article, “But they will know that this company cares about the environment.”
See also:
From Transfats to Carbon Dioxide: Will Product Labeling Impact Climate Change?
FTC Workshop on Carbon Offsets