Stella McCartney Just Called Out The Fashion Industry
Looking good doesn’t have to ruin the environment.
That’s the message of a new video featuring fashion designer Stella McCartney, who’s partnering with environmental nonprofit Canopy to push clothing companies to stop sourcing fabric from ancient and endangered forests.
The video, which dropped this week, explains how producing fabrics like viscose and rayon, which is made from wood pulp, pose a serious threat to ancient forests across the globe. And it describes how major fashion brands and designers, like McCartney, are working with Canopy to stop sourcing materials from imperiled woodlands.
When we think about fabric, we tend to think cotton, wool, polyester. But ballooning cotton prices have caused wood-based fabrics to make a comeback. That’s a problem, environmental groups say, because around 30 percent of the rayon used in clothing comes from ancient or endangered forests.
“These man-made cellulosic fabrics like rayon, viscose and lyocell, are created from trees cut down exclusively to feed dissolving pulp mills,” Nicole Rycroft, founder and executive director of Canopy, told The Guardian in 2014.
The result? “Ancient and endangered rainforests are being logged, pulped and turned into T-shirts, dresses and suit linings,” she said.
Each year, suppliers grind up roughly 100 million trees, often culled from ancient and endangered forests, to produce wood-based fabrics, according to Canopy. That number could double in the next 10 years, the group says.
By: Casey Williams
Source: The Huffington Post
