With not only H&M and organic certifier EcoCert caught in an unprecedented organic cotton scandal, courtesy of “organic cotton” suppliers from India, retailers worldwide can’t help but brace for their own industry-altering aftermath.

According to Ecotextile News, Lothar Kruse, a director of the independent testing laboratory Impetus in Bremerhaven, Germany examined the cotton fabrics that came from Indian farms and claimed roughly “30% of the tested samples” contained genetically modified (GM) cotton.

The head of the Indian agricultural authority Apeda, Sanjay Dave, told …

Tags: Control Union , EcoCert , Ecotextile News , fiber , genetically modified cotton , H&M , india , Indian farms , Lothar Kruse , organic cotton scandal , Organic exchange

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Here’s an article to stop you in your tracks.

Ecotextile News reports on the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, India -an area troubled by its farmer suicide problem – and the tribal area of Adilabad, Andhra Pradesh. For those of you not aware that watchdogs are necessary, you need only read on.

According to Coral Rose, founder of Eco-Innovations, companies like Designs LLC, (doing business as Jonäno), CSE, Inc. (d/b/a Mad Mod) and Pure Bamboo, LLC are guilty of deceptively labeling and advertising their products as made of bamboo fiber when …

Tags: bamboo fiber , Coral Rose , Eco Innovations , Ecotextile News , GOTs Certification , green claims , india , Maharashtra , organic cotton , pesticide , Suicide farmers , sustainable manufacturing , Zameen Organic

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Both of my grandmothers worked in textile and sewing mills in Fall River when the city was in its heyday. My paternal grandmother, a Kerouac, came from Montreal to work, leaving behind all that she knew for a different life.

Sometimes I think about the power these jobs held for young women when I see beautiful pictures of her clad in stylish garb on French fire escapes, young and content. I think these mills called to women to come out of kitchens and washrooms to do something with more purpose. Many …

Tags: Ecotextile News , Fall River , Kerouac , knitting and sewing groups , LLC , Lowell , Sustainable Textile Group

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New eco-fabrics are constantly being developed all over the world.

One day, what we think is so forward now (organic cotton, bamboo and tencel) will be as normal to us as breakfast cereal.

Like Optimer Brand’s 2008 launch of Dri-release E.C.O. [Environmentally Correct Origins] which uses recycled polyester and organic cotton.
According to a recent Ecotextile News press release, “New Dri-release E.C.O. 2nd Nature will combine post-consumer recycled polyester with post-industrial recycled cotton made from garment manufacturing clip waste, yielding a product made from 100% recycled materials.”

To produce the new fabric, …

Tags: bamboo , Dri-Release , Ecotextile News , organic cotton , tencel

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We eco-fabric lovers are insatiable!

Organic cotton? Been there.

Bamboo? Closet full of it.

Rescued fabrics? Doing it for years.

So what’s new?

Chicken feathers.

Now, before you wrinkle your nose and say no way, let’s think about it this. Let’s pretend we are on a desert island and need some clothes and all around us, chickens are clucking and feathers are flying.
Your clothes are literally unraveling and, well”¦chicken feathers.

According to an Ecotextile News article, millions of tons of feathers end up in landfills yearly but new research in the U.S., …

Tags: chicken feathers , CSIRO , Ecotextile News , Professor Yiqi Yang , University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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