Sustainable Swim

Although the majority of textile waste originates from household sources, waste textiles also arise during yarn and fabric manufacture, garment-making processes and from the retail industry.  These are termed post-industrial waste, as opposed to the post-consumer waste which goes to jumble sales and charity shops. Together they provide a vast potential for recovery and recycling.

• Reduces the need for landfill space. Textiles present particular problems in landfill as synthetic (man-made fibres) products will not decompose, while woollen garments do decompose and produce methane, which contributes to global warming.
• Reduces pressure on virgin resources.
• Aids the balance of payments as we import fewer materials for our needs.
• Results in less pollution and energy savings, as fibres do not have to be transported from abroad.
• Reclaiming fibre avoids many of the polluting and energy intensive processes needed to make textiles from virgin materials, including: -
• Savings on energy consumption when processing, as items do not need to be re-dyed or scoured.
• Less effluent, as unlike raw wool, it does not have to be thoroughly washed using large volumes of water.
• Reduction of demand for dyes and fixing agents and the problems caused by their use and manufacture.

After the huge disaster of the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh in April, Labour Behind the Label as well as many other companies have gone about setting up a contract for the health and safety standards in these factories; 

A powerful alliance with leading unions IndustriALL Global Union and UNI Global Union, the Clean Clothes Campaign and Worker Rights Consortium, supported by campaigns run by, among others, Avvaz, War on Want, Change.org and People and Planet have changed the rules of the game for workers in Bangladesh.

We welcome the decision of those companies who have signed up to the Accord and commend them for acting responsibly in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza tragedy. Forty-eight hours ago H&M started the ball rolling and we now have most major global household brands on board.

As the countdown ended the following companies have signed on: H&M, Inditex, C&A, PVH, Tchibo, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Primark, El Corte Inglés, Hess Natur, jbc, Mango, Carrefour, KiK, Helly Hansen, G-Star, Aldi, New Look, Next, Mothercare, Loblaws, Sainsbury’s, Benetton, N Brown Group, Stockmann,  WE Group, Esprit, Rewe, Lidl, Switcher and Abercrombie&Fitch.

Social Audits
Where inspectors travel to factories to assess the conditions of the factory against a code of conduct. Inspectors will look at wage sheets, timekeeping, personnel records, check health and safety problems, watch the working at work, and conduct interviews with managers and workers. Social Audits can take days, or a few hours. Social audits are not entirely reliable however as some suppliers and factories will hide and cover up any aspects that may fail them the inspection, for example giving underage workers the day off, protecting themselves from child labour laws. Workers may be train to say 'the right things' to the inspectors in interviews, as admitted by a factory manager in North India, “We hold meetings with the workers, train them, before the audit. We tell them what may be asked and what should be answered”
Source: http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/campaigns/itemlist/category/220-clean-up-fashion

Hourly wages in garment factories around the world are often less than 50p. In Bangladesh, where 80% of the economy depends on the fashion industry, the minimum wage now stands at £7.16 a month (2006). That’s 2.5 times less than its value of £18 in 1994, while the price of essential commodities- like rice, sugar, cooking oil and water – has risen by 200 per cent…(making it) virtually impossible for workers to support their families. (Ethical Trading Initiative , 2006)

I was interested to learn actually how plastics such as bottles and carrier bags can be turned into fabrics, and found a gardening website that describes how the process is done to create their gardening gloves.

Step 1. 
Empty plastic beverage bottles are collected, sorted, crushed & baled at a recycling center. Then ground into flakes, & screened and washed to remove caps, labels & contaminants.

Step 2.
The flakes are heated, further screened and cleaned, dried and placed in a vented extruder. The extruded plastic is cooled and then thoroughly chopped to make plastic pellets.

Step 3.
The pellets are sent to a yarn manufacturing facility where they are melted & spun into polyester fiber. The recycled PET fibers are blended with new PET fibers and spun into polyester yarn.

Step 4.
The polyester yarn is sent to a mill for knitting or weaving into fabric. 
Source : http://www.westcountygardener.com/recycled.php

For the use of swimwear, the fibres from the plastics will have to be blended with other materials to give them stretch. An example of a fibre it could be blended with is nylon, which is readily used for swimwear, and can also be recycled.