Archive for January 2008 | Monthly archive page
Sao Paulo – For young Brazilians worrying about the latest fashions, the dangers of polluting rivers and oceans with billions of plastic bottles and tons of pesticides may seem a distant concern.
But new technology that makes clothing from the polyester fibres from recycled bottles and organic cotton grown without pesticides may prove that being environmentally conscious and staying hip can walk hand-in-hand.
During this month’s Sao Paulo Fashion Week, the biggest fashion event in Latin America, a group of local designers displayed several glamorous gowns made from recycled materials, known as e-fabrics.
| ‘Regular cotton is the worst crop for the environment’ |
“It’s a great idea. It’s a way of educating people and making them think more about these issues,” said Ruth Marshall-Johnson, an associate editor with the Worth Global Style Network research and fashion news service.
The recycled bottles also are used to produce materials that serve as filling for matelasse fabric, ties and lapels. Collecting the bottles also generates income for thousands of poor Brazilian families.
Technological fabrics will be responsible for great changes in the business, said Gloria Kalil, one of Brazil’s top fashion consultants.
“From now on, the industry will have to consider the environment. Otherwise, who’s going to buy things that are damaging for the planet?” she said.
Marshall-Johnson agreed. She pointed out that the Internet has become a powerful tool for consumers to investigate whether what they wear utilises slave labour or involves fabrics produced in a manner that is not ecologically friendly.
| ‘The designers were interested in taking part’ |
Commercially, producing certain e-fabrics such as organic cotton can lead to extra cost for the consumer of up to 20 percent.
“Organic cotton costs more to grow, but people don’t realise that regular cotton is the worst crop for the environment because of the amount of pesticides it requires,” said researcher Selma Fernandes, from the Institute E, a non-governmental organisation sponsoring the fabrics project.
“These pesticides end up killing butterflies and birds and pollute rivers.”
This year, designer Raquel Davidowicz, of the fashion house UMA, created her first collection of clothing for the catwalk made from organic cotton and bamboo fibres.
“We were looking for new fabrics and chose these exactly because they are not harmful for the environment,” Davidowicz said. “We are aware that they are trickier to sell.”
Specialists say it might take five years for the trend to catch up and for more people to start to pay the premium price for clothes made from e-fabrics.
“The designers were interested in taking part in this project. Now we hope to create the desire among consumers to purchase this type of clothing,” Fernandes said.
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What’s up with all these power outages? I blew a hard drive on my pc yesterday because a major company of our country failed to do proper planning and they are oblivious about it. Yes, they are suggesting solutions such as geyser blankets, energy saving light bulbs and other insignificant methods to try and solve the power problems but this is only to mask the fact that they are losers. They are in charge of the energy supply (right) and they are the ones who know what is available (right) for the present and the future, so why did they not implement these ideas when there were no shortages. Maybe we could have had a culture that was energy conscious today and they wouldn’t need to run around trying to “shoosh” everyone.
The crappy thing is that last time there were power cuts, the service fees increased. How ironic is that? They never planned properly, they are costing companies (and this country) a loss of production time, but yet we have to pay more. Bad service from their side equals higher charges for us, never heard of it! Now I hear that it will take up to 7 years to sought out these problems. And we are hosting the world cup in 2 years? How can our economy continue to grow when our infrastructure remains the same?
The truth is that the leaders of Eskom need to take some lessons from the energizer bunny. They need to stick a battery up their %&^ and do the things that they are paid (ridiculous sums of money) for, and they need to do this quickly.
Yes, I can moan and groan about it but at the end of the day I am just like them, powerless!
PS. Did you know that you can claim for your computer hardware if it is damaged by these power outages. Just call Eskom service consultants and they will tell you how.
T shirt printing in Cape town has never been this great! Take full advantage of this Lava-hot special. Place an order for 80 t shirts or more with printing and you will not pay set-up or artwork costs. It doesn’t matter whether it it is 1,2,3 or 4 colours; or even if it is in more than 1 location, all your set-up and artwork charges are scrapped!
We did a few t shirts for Altersage for their Cape Town Joomla! day, which came out great. Thanks for the link -love and if you have any pics of the t’s, please mail some because we never had time to take any, which was the case for the whole of December.
I must say that we achieved the impossible in our first December (2007) as Lava Ink . We had a couple of overnight deliveries, where some desperate clients gave us a brief the one day and we had to deliver the following day, which we did. This is something that you won’t find anywhere else and I must say big-ups to my team for making it happen (not saying we’ll do it again though).
