How green and labor-friendly is bamboo clothing?

Fabric made of bamboo is marketed as “green” by its vendors. But is it? We researched green clothing choices, including bamboo, while writing our last book "Going Green." Here's what we learned about bamboo clothing.

It's soft as cotton, with a silk-like sheen. It can handle dryers and ironing, will resist wrinkling if pulled from the dryer immediately. Bamboo fabric air-dries faster than cotton.

Most commercial bamboo is grown in China. It doesn’t get the volume of pesticides used in conventional cotton cultivation, for sure. It may not get any pesticides. The Chinese farmers who grow it can't afford pesticides, for one thing.

Bamboo is usually manufactured into clothing in China, too, which raises the question of sweatshop labor. Bamboo Textile in Los Angeles is one provider of bamboo clothing in the U.S. Their name keeps cropping up in short magazine pieces, notes about up-and-coming clothing trends. I called the number on their web site but was unable to reach anyone who could answer questions for me.

Since I did reach a couple of hemp providers who also have factories in China, I asked one of them for information about Chinese bamboo factories. Lawrence Serbin of Hemp Traders was willing to answer a question or two about bamboo. Of course, I expected he might have biased answers, since he sells competing hemp products. But what the heck. Lawrence said that bamboo is not a natural fiber like hemp or cotton because there is no usable fiber in the bamboo itself. Rather the bamboo is ground up and treated with chemicals that turn it into a liquid pulp. Then the liquid is shot out from something like a showerhead. The extruded streams of liquid harden into the fibers that are woven together to make bamboo fabric. Hmm. Didn't know that. That's not necessarily bad, unless the chemicals are bad.

I asked Lynda Grose, a sustainable textiles consultant, about the environmental aspects of bamboo. She told me that bamboo for hardwood floors is considered more sustainable than growing trees like oak or maple for flooring. (Bamboo is a grass, not a tree.) “However,” Lynda said, “rendering bamboo from a plant to a yarn is a chemical process, the same process for conventional rayon. It’s highly polluting, involving hydrogen disulfide emissions.Rayon and bamboo are ‘regenerated cellulose’ fibers and are man-made. Most marketing touts bamboo as a natural fiber. That’s true for bamboo hardwood floors but not for textiles."

But I still wanted to hear from a bamboo clothing vendor . Since I was unable to reach anyone at Bamboo Textile on the phone, I looked on their web site for answers. I looked up “Processing and Manufacturing” first, on the “Bamboo Textile” web site. I notice that, today, that section no longer exists on the website, or at least I can't find it. But at the time I first looked, in late 2007, it said, “Stalks of bamboo are essentially crushed and pulped to separate the natural fibers. The fibers are then mixed with the lowest impacted chemicals to convert the plant fiber into textile quality fiber. As with many textiles, the process to make bamboo into fiber uses caustic soda. There are, however, alternatives that are more environmentally friendly." The site didn't mention whether the company uses the more environmentally friendly alternatives. The information given didn’t seem to contradict Serbin’s comments.

Then I looked under “Waste from the Factory,” another category on Bamboo Textile's web site in 2007. Factories in developing nations such as China are notorious for dumping toxins, e.g. dye residues, into streams and rivers, or spewing unfiltered emissions into the air. So I was eager to find a denial of such practices. Unfortunately, I didn’t find one. Instead, the Bamboo Textile web site said, under Waste from the Factory, “We are currently researching the answer to this question. Please stay tuned.”

Okay, let’s move on to labor and sweatshop issues, my biggest concern for a Chinese factory. I couldn't find anything about labor practices on Bamboo Textiles' current web site today. But here’s what the web site said on that matter in 2007:

“Our factory has established labor practices that are based on SA8000 principles (Social Accountability International 8000) and plans are underway to receive full-fledged SA8000 certification." I went to the Social Accountability International 8000 web site to see the criteria for the certification that Bamboo Textile aspires to. Here they are:

1. Child Labor: No workers under the age of 15; minimum lowered to 14 for countries operating under the ILO Convention 138 developing-country exception; remediation of any child found to be working
2.Forced Labor: No forced labor, including prison or debt bondage labor; no lodging of deposits or identity papers by employers or outside recruiters
3. Health and Safety: Provide a safe and healthy work environment; take steps to prevent injuries; regular health and safety worker training; system to detect threats to health and safety; access to bathrooms and potable water
4. Freedom of Association and Right to Collective Bargaining: Respect the right to form and join trade unions and bargain collectively; where law prohibits these freedoms, facilitate parallel means of association and bargaining
5. Discrimination: No discrimination based on race, caste, origin, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, union or political affiliation, or age; no sexual harassment
6. Discipline: No corporal punishment, mental or physical coercion or verbal abuse
7. Working Hours: Comply with the applicable law but, in any event, no more than 48 hours per week with at least one day off for every seven day period; voluntary overtime paid at a premium rate and not to exceed 12 hours per week on a regular basis; overtime may be mandatory if part of a collective bargaining agreement
8.Compensation: Wages paid for a standard work week must meet the legal and industry standards and be sufficient to meet the basic need of workers and their families; no disciplinary deductions.
9. Management Systems: Facilities seeking to gain and maintain certification must go beyond simple compliance to integrate the standard into their management systems and practices.

Okay, well, could be worse. But could be better too. According to these standards, it’s okay to hire 14 or 15-year-olds to work six days per week, up to 60 hours per week (including the permissible overtime); wages must equal industry standard. Not sure what the industry standard is for garment workers in China, but Worldwatch reports clothing-industry salaries of 15 cents per hour in Indonesia, 85 cents per hour in Mexico. The SA8000 standards are not that reassuring.

At any rate, these are the standards Bamboo Textile was working toward, at least in 2007. I think I know what the folks at Sweatshop Watch would have to say about that. They already said it: in order to be sure a garment factory is not a sweatshop, the factory should be unionized, or a worker-owned coop.

I looked for another well-established vendor of bamboo clothing to peruse, and settled on Shirts of Bamboo. They have a well-done, useful web site with lots of information. All of their bamboo is grown in China. Some of their shirts are “knitted, dyed, cut and assembled” in South Carolina. Some, in a factory in China. On the subject of “social accountability,” i.e., sweatshop labor, the “Shirts of Bamboo” web site says, "Our suppliers in China are certified as Socially Accountable using SA8000 Standards." Ah yes.The SA 8000 standards, same as Bamboo Textile.

Well, that’s nice. But I think I’m gonna skip the bamboo for now. Probably skip the hemp too, and anything else that’s made in China. If the above-average factories can still hire 14 or 15-yr-olds to work 60 hrs per week, then.....

That vintage clothing store in my home town is looking better and better.

By Sally Kneidel, PhD

Keywords:: bamboo bamboo clothing sweatshops SA8000 labor rights China

EPA sees potential in deadly coal mine methane

Just after 9:00 on the morning of September 4, an ominous rumble echoed through the hills of China’s Liaoning province. For the residents of the bustling city of Fuxin, it was an all-too familiar sound. This latest in a series of lethal mining catastrophes claimed 24 lives, injured 6, and trapped 3, reinforcing China’s notorious reputation in the hazardous coal mining industry. With an average of 13 deaths a day, China’s mines are considered the most dangerous in the world.

While the cause of the Fuxin tragedy is still under investigation, officials suspect coalbed methane as a possible cause. The mining process inevitably frees this colorless, odorless gas from the pores of coal beds where it naturally occurs. Methane is both highly flammable and an asphyxiant, threatening miners with explosion as well as suffocation.

But some scientists see potential for good in this volatile killer. Although methane is deadly if not monitored carefully, it is also the principle component of natural gas, a powerful source of energy and a relatively clean-burning fossil fuel.

The Methane to Markets Partnership, a new program sponsored by the EPA, hopes to encourage an international effort to capture coal mine methane, or CMM, and harness its energy for good. CMM accounts for about 8% of global methane production. Because methane is a potent greenhouse gas – 20 to 25 times as powerful as carbon dioxide – preventing this gas from leaking into the atmosphere would mitigate global warming as well as provide a cleaner source of energy.

If all goes as planned, Methane to Markets’ three preliminary target sites in China could yield as much as 72,000 metric tons of methane this year alone. The partnership hopes to get its 27 member countries and 750 member organizations harnessing coalbed methane in the near future.

“The Methane to Markets Partnership is an action-oriented initiative that will reduce global methane emissions to enhance economic growth, promote energy security, improve the environment, and reduce greenhouse gases,” touts the EPA. “Other benefits include improving mine safety, reducing waste, and improving local air quality.”

And although it can’t be quantified with science or statistics, the mourning families in Fuxin know that there is another benefit that will be even greater.

by Sadie Kneidel

China's Olympic Village is green but the country's environmental record is scary

China has received kudos worldwide for a green Olympics. They've used the latest innovations in sustainable architecture, energy and landscaping for the 2008 Olympic Village in Beijing (see our previous post by Juliana Sloane).

Given the media coverage of the Olympics, such efforts will go a long way in improving the world's impressions of China's environmental scorecard. China's choices for the Olympic village are commendable, in that they've set a precedent for future Olympic villages and other major construction projects, and they've also publicly validated that "green" is a goal to be proud of, for all of us.

But the green Olympic Village is a bit of smoke screen for China. The reality is that China is the world's most polluted nation.

According to Peter Navarro of UC-Irvine, 70 percent of China's major rivers are severely polluted, 80 percent of its rivers fail to meet standards for fishing, and 90 percent of its cities suffer from water pollution. As a result, over half of China's people drink foul water of a quality well below World Health Organization standards. Not surprisingly, liver and stomach cancers are leading causes of death in the Chinese countryside.

The widespread water-pollution problem was evident even in the Olympics, although not widely publicized. One third of the Olympic sailing course was closed for sailing practice due to massive algal blooms which the Chinese scrambled to contain. Algal blooms are a rampant problem from China's overuse of fertilizers, which flood into rivers and streams. When the algae decay, the bacteria use all the oxygen in rivers and lakes, killing fish and other aquatic life, while the high nitrogen levels from fertilizers are dangerous and can be lethal to humans.

algae in the polluted waters of Qingdao, one of the main sailing venues for the Olympic Games (photo courtesy of the BBC)

China's pollution of its waters is only one aspect of its frightening environmental performance. According to Worldwatch Institute, worldwide carbon emissions increased 22% between 2000 and 2007, and China accounted for a whopping 57% of that growth.

China's recent industrialization has been explosive and unprecedented. Because of their huge human populations, the coal-dependent development of China and India is the biggest driver of growth in global carbon emissions. China's fossil-fuel emissions passed those of the United States this year, reports the United Nations Environmental Program.

Stabilizing our global climate will require that industrialized and heavily polluting countries like the United States move to low-carbon energy sources, and that rapidly expanding nations like China and India pursue cleaner energy development.

But China's economy will grow faster if its industries are allowed to minimize costs and maximize profits; in other words, if they're allowed to burn the cheapest fuels, such as coal, and skip the expensive scrubbers that can remove pollutants from smokestack emissions. And just like the United States, China prefers the prosperity of rapid economic growth. I wonder if China's motivation for hosting the Olympics was, at least in part, the opportunity to divert attention from their growing contributions to our planet's climatic plight. With a population more than 4 times that of the U.S., their potential for future damage dwarfs our own.

On the bright side, international action to protect our climate is intensifying. In December 2007, the 192 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to establish a new global climate change agreement by 2009. This will build on the existing Kyoto Protocol, which commits industrial countries to reduce green­house gas emissions to 6-8 percent below their 1990 levels. The current Kyoto Protocol has not been adopted by dev­eloping countries such as China or by the United States. We must all work toward the compliance of these biggest offenders with the new agreement of 2009, starting with the candidates we choose in November. Perhaps one day the green face that countries present to the world stage will truly represent a greener way of guarding our rivers, our air, our future. Maybe we'll celebrate our Olympics of the year 2052 in a world where carbon emissions have stabilized and lakes aren't clogged with algae.

by Sally Kneidel

Sources:
United Nations Environmental Program. "Carbon emissions are rising, and policies to address them are growing too, think tank reports." http://www.climateneutral.unep.org/cnn_contentdetail.aspx?m=175&amid=2154

Peter Navarro. "China's Pollution Olympics." AlterNet. July 15, 2008. http://www.alternet.org/environment/91471/

James Russell, Worldwatch Institute. "Carbon Emissions on the Rise But Policies Growing Too." August 6, 2008.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5839?utm_campaign=vital_signs_online&utm_medium=email&utm_source=carbon_emissions

Our previous posts about China (click to view):

• The greening of the games: Beijing's Olympic village makes strides in sustainable housing
  
• Hemp clothes
• China's growing appetite for meat will strain world's water supplies
• Top 6 ways to protect wildlife from commercial trade
• Tyson and Smithfield drooling over untapped meat profits abroad
• Environmental footprints of rich nations outweigh the debt of developing nations
• Organic cotton - it's worth every penny
  

Keywords:: Olympics Olympic games Olympic village Beijing China carbon emissions population growth greenhouse gases climate change Kyoto

China's growing appetite for meat will strain world water supplies

China's rapid industrialization and increasing population, along with a growing preference for meat on the dinner table, are creating water shortages that will have world repercussions. In coming decades, China will have to rely on food imports to meet demand.

China is home to 21% of the world's population. Its economy has grown at the fastest rate in recent world history, about 8% per year over the last two decades, says Junguo Liu, an environmental scientist in Switzerland.

During this period of unprecedented growth, the consumption of grains in China has remained steady, even dropping a little. But the consumption of meat in China has more than quadrupled since 1980. The production of meat requires much more water per serving than any other kind of food. Even though meat and other animal products made up only 16% of the typical Chinese diet in 2003, those foods accounted for more than one-half of the country's food-related water consumption, report Liu and colleague Hubert Savenije of Delft University in an upcoming Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

How does the Chinese diet compare to the American diet?

Food-related water consumption per capita in the United States is about 3,074 cubic meters per year, almost four times the Chinese figure. The water needed to produce the typical U.S. citizen's consumption of meat alone far exceeds that required to produce the average Chinese citizen's entire diet.

Why is that? According to Danielle Nierenberg of Worldwatch Institute, Americans eat 248 lbs of meat per person per year, far more per capita than any other country in the world.

The world of the future will not be able to support a growing population eating more and more meat. Already more than 1/3 of the world's population live in regions where water is considered scarce.

Keywords :: China, water shortage, meat industry, American meat consumption, population growth

Sources:
Sid Perkins. "A thirst for meat." Science News. January 19, 2008.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20080119/fob4.asp

Danielle Nierenberg. "Happier meals: rethinking the global meat industry." Worldwatch Institute. 2005. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/819