A philosophical / ethics question
We have been thinking of having some farm t-shirts made for a couple of years. Naturally, we would want them made as local and sustainable as possible.
A google search, just by luck, turned up a facility in Monroe that made t-shirts. Initial thought was “that is local”.
More investigation turned up TS designs in Burlington, NC. Whoa! They run their facility on bio-diesel and are doing all they can to reduce pollutants that are part textile production. Dig around their site for more information.
The plant in Monroe will run as few as 12 shirts for $24 each, and for a 200 shirt run, it is less than $4 each
TS Designs requires a 200 shirt min. with shirts costing $12-$15.
TS Designs offers 4 choices in t-shirts. Shirts made with 100% organic cotton manufactured entirely in NC, shirts made in LA out of organic cotton, organic cotton t-shirts that are fair trade, and conventional cotton t-shirts that are produced entirely in NC in a program called dirt to shirt.
Here is where it gets ethically challenging. How far and what direction do we take to locally grown?
One of the farms and the gin that is involved in the dirt to shirt program just happens to be neighbors of ours, the farm and gin is located about a mile away across the creek and through the woods as the crow flies.
The kicker is that they grow Monsanto Round-Up Ready gmo cotton.
Round-Up Ready
All the farmers around here, my dad included, are growing round-up ready corn, soybeans, and cotton.
So do we by-pass local farmers that are neighbors whose cotton is genetically modified and use organic cotton for our t-shirts?
There is some organic cotton grown in the US but not much. I was wondering where all this organic cotton is grown. Apparently India and Turkey.
“India took over Turkey’s long-standing position as the leader, seeing its production increase by 292 percent to reach 73,702 MT, or about half of world organic cotton production. Other leading organic cotton producers, according to rank, were Syria, Turkey, China, Tanzania, United States, Uganda, Peru, Egypt and Burkina Faso.” Source
Notice that the US is between Tanzania and Uganda in organic cotton production…
Apparently, organic cotton has to be picked by hand.
Hand-picking cotton
It makes most of the older folks around here that grew up doing it shudder. They hate the sight of cotton.
The three years my dad grew cotton, the neighbors around the fields would come out to watch it be harvested by machine and share how awful it was to have to hand-pick cotton when they were growing up in the late 40’s and 50’s.
Organic cotton seems hip but if it is hand-harvested.. it is close to slave labor. Good intentions start to fall by the wayside…
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Thanks for the plug, I hope we get an opportunity to do t-shirts for you. If the shirts are undyed, white, the minimum is 72 units, assorted sizes. Our Cotton of the Carolinas t-shirts, dirt to shirt in 750 miles underlines the complexity of sustainability. We are still a big user of organic cotton, but found ourselves buying more and more from overseas sources. We grow cotton in NC! The other big thing we are hoping to do with this brand is to demostrate complete transparencty, the consumer can connect dirrectly to everyone involved in our process.
Thanks for doing your homework!
PS Please follow us on our TS Designs Facebook fan page
Great post…things I think about often as well. My rule of thumb sounds overly simplistic, and is therefore only a general tendency rather than a dogma. I believe in investing locally so that I can build relationships with the growers and better understand the issues they face. If I can make them more financially sustainable, I’m helping to position them to make choices that are socially and environmentally sustainable, too. I don’t have as much perceived influence over folks that are not local, so I go local as a way to influence my own community/region/state to become more sustainable: financially, socially, and environmentally.
I found this article extremely helpful especially since it’s from a farming point of view. I too have been looking at TS Designs–for a year now. I’m going to offer a garden clothing line. I was sold on organic cotton because most of my audience is sold on organic gardening. But you’ve brought up a good question for us NCers. If we are going to buy local–etc—then this genetically altered seed may be a better option.
I can sure appreciate TS Design’s Dirt to Shirt program.
Thanks for the info and food for thought.
Anna