Ethical shopping in London
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By Rebecca Taylor. Additional research Hannah Kane
Posted: Tue Apr 10 2007 
Organic cotton jumpsuit, £29.99, H&M 3 Organic cotton
Cotton provides nearly half of the world’s textile needs and it is often regarded as an environmentally friendly product. In fact, a quarter of the insecticides used across the world are applied to cotton plantations. Insecticides are harmful both to the farmers, who may suffer blood poisoning as a result of using them, and to the environment as they can run into the waterways polluting them and contaminating the food chain. The biggest incentive for farmers to use organic cotton is that it reduces the cost of purchasing pesticides, usually from large corporations. Organic cotton should carry a Soil Association logo, but even then, many of the organic garments sold on the high street only contain approximately five per cent of organic cotton in them.Advertisement
Best: H&M
H&M has made an effort to introduce organic lines across its range, and this spring launched an impressive new line including dresses, blouses, jeans and children’s clothes. However, the figures are still relatively small. For example, the store used more than 40 tonnes of organic cotton in 2005, which sounds a lot, but actually only translates into around 160,000 T-shirts – a fraction of the clothing empire’s output. New Look became the latest high-street brand to launch a small line of organic clothes last August.
Worst: Supermarkets
Although they are making a small effort – Asda now stocks a meagre range of organic T-shirts as do Tesco and Sainbury’s. Just not good enough: must try harder.- Add your comment to this feature
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6 comments
I love Annie Greenabelle. You can get them in topshop concessions but also direct from anniegreenabelle.com
check out bibico they are a great fair trade clothing brand.
They sell beautiful knitwear.
www.bibico.co.uk
Absolute Organic is an organic cotton brand which I discovered in Spain. Is very nice, it has a beautifull knitting sweaters, jackets, dresses.... and collections for man and woman.
www.absoluteorganic.es
I totally agree. There are some really good fairtrade websites out there that should be getting the publicity not the big stores who seem to be just greenwashing. www.boudalu.com and www.fairandfabulous.co.uk are good examples of boutiques selling fair trade products that are original. Boudalu is not for profit. I doubt Philip Green is giving his profits back to the people in developing countries who are harvesting the cotton and sewing the clothes for Topshop!
I would like to see more ethical and fair trade companies promoting their products. They need big magazines and newspapers behind them to get exposure!!! The number of wonderful gorgeous fair trade gifts that I have bought online and the poor companies are so small they get next to no recognition. For example, www.bobelle.co.uk, www.fairtradeboutique and www.ethicsgirls.co.uk are all fantastic sites that really care. They just need that bit of exposure in magazines or newspapers to get their name out to the masses!! Topshop, M&S, Hennes etc do not need such huge publicity and they also just have one item that is fair trade/ethical. What about all their other items?! Let's support the local and small businesses who work hard and deserve our money and custom.
For more info on cotton and the human rights and environmental abuses that are linked to its production check out the Cotton Campaign being run by EJF - you can take online actions to high street retailers and ask them to sort it out! www.ejfoundation.org