There was a time when environmentally friendly clothing was though to be too expensive or hard to find. Those days are gone now as green clothing has become much more mainstream. The advent of the Internet has also helped make this type of product readily available to a much wider audience than in the past.
That being said, why would someone want to purchase these clothes? Though the prices have come down in recent years, they are still pricier than their mass-produced counterparts found at the superstores. There are a variety of reasons to choose this type of clothing over standard brands and types.
The first reason is that the materials were grown without the use of pesticides. Pesticides are dangerous chemicals that run off from the water and soil, entering lakes, streams, wells and municipal water sources. They taint the water supply and can cause health problems with prolonged ingestion.
The next reason is that environmentally friendly clothes are generally made with renewable resources. This means that the materials used are easy to grow, don’t take up a lot of resources and grow quickly so they are easy to keep making. Materials like bamboo and hemp are great examples of raw materials that fit this description.
Most people have a variety of colors in their wardrobe. These colors come from dyes, many of which are man-made and can be toxic to the environment. Eco clothes use dyes that are safer and not toxic for the earth. In fact, several dyes may even be derived from the earth itself. For example. beets make a very strong red-colored dye or stain that can be used to color cloth.
Eco friendly clothes also have a smaller environmental impact, often called a footprint. An item’s footprint is determined by how many resources it takes to produce it. In the case of clothes, this includes soil, water, fertilizer, pesticides and labor. Green clothes require a smaller footprint because they are derived from fast-growing sources that generally do not take as much resources to procure.
Some clothes may even be made from recycled materials. For example, water bottles are an environmental scourge that clog up landfills the world over. Instead of throwing them away, those who recycle the bottles may wear them one day because plastic can be turned into a surprisingly soft textile that clothes can be made out of. Even other clothes can be recycled and then sanitized and spun into new clothing that has a small footprint and stopped further filling of already overstuffed landfills.
As a bonus, some eco friendly clothes are also considered fair trade clothes. Fair trade gives underprivileged and impoverished people all over the world the chance to earn a living wage by paying them a fair price for their items. Clothing bought from fair trade companies means a reduction in poverty for manual laborers.
With all of these features and possibilities, it is easy to see why environmentally friendly clothing is a good option. The materials used are better for the earth and therefore better for you. With prices going down and more farmers turning to renewable crops, more people may soon turn to this type of clothing instead of their usual kind.
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