Mass-produced clothing generates 37 tons of CO2 for every ton of fast fashion, making it the second dirtiest industry in the world. But there is a better way. A way to produce clothes locally with natural fibers grown in regenerative ways. A way that is at least carbon neutral, if not carbon beneficial. And that method of hyperlocal textile manufacturing is facilitated by fibersheds.
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Lorraine, why don’t you start us off here?
B. Lorraine Smith: Are you sure?
Christophe Jospe: I think it’s only fair that our guest host here introduces us. You just have to say hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Lorraine Smith.
B. Lorraine Smith: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Lorraine Smith. I’m going to say that again because I garbled the word reversing.
Ross Kenyon: This is all recording now. This is behind the scenes. This is how the sausage is made.
B. Lorraine Smith: I’m going to make another sausage.
Ross Kenyon: You’re going to make another sausage? Okay, go ahead.
B. Lorraine Smith: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Lorraine Smith.
Ross Kenyon: Lorraine is guest hosting one of our biggest fans. Lorraine, we love you too. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being such a supporter. If you like the show a lot and you badger us enough, maybe you can come on too. Just kidding. That’s not what happened. We invited Lorraine because she is excellent and well-spoken and deserves to be on the show asking questions.
Christophe Jospe: And if you haven’t yet turned off, you will find out why we have Lorraine on this show because it’s really a special episode. Lorraine is, I think, going to play two seats. She’ll be in the hot seat of answering questions. She’ll also be a guest. We’ll allow her to introduce our real guest. But before we get into that, Lorraine, here we are in the beautiful city of Montreal at the Living Soils Symposium. And we’re stuck away in this little quiet room. And they very graciously allowed us to sit around...
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know about you, but me personally, I feel like I’m living la vie mon royale. I feel like I’m living it now.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah, we have not yet had our poutine. Soon we will.
Ross Kenyon: You have to. It’s legally required before you leave. It’s like the exit tax at the airport.
B. Lorraine Smith: We do have the Regenerative Poutine Inc. WhatsApp group, though. So I think the seeds are sown for regenerative poutine.
Ross Kenyon: You’re a little too clever for your own good, Lorraine, but I will allow it. I will permit it.
Christophe Jospe: So what does Montreal have to do with anything of why we think this city has significance to even recording this podcast right now?
B. Lorraine Smith: Yeah, that’s a big question. I’ll try to land in something coherent. I mean, the simplest answer is that it is the city where Regeneration Canada was founded, and they are the hosts of the Living Soil Symposium. But I don’t think that’s random. I think... Montreal, one of the largest cities in Canada and the largest city in Quebec, has emerged as a sort of beacon of some of the most progressive practices that are relevant to business today. And I think this symposium, which is really focused on soil, sort of naturally leads to conversations about agriculture, forestry, food.
But it really touches a lot more than that. So I’ll just briefly recall that very early on in my own journey around regenerative business, earlier known as sustainability, I remember learning a lot around lifecycle analysis, a lot of the emergent methodologies about a decade and a half ago. And so much of that was really growing up here in Montreal, real convergence of people from Europe. So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Regeneration Canada was born here and that this really interesting interactive soil symposium is taking place here today.
Christophe Jospe: Great. And obviously, there was the Montreal Protocol and all of these sort of great big climate activities. And I think Montreal technically is in Upper Canada, which was a term. No, it was not. They’re shaking their heads. That was... I guess I’m wrong. So it’s not Upper Canada. We’ll find out what Upper Canada is because sitting directly across from us is Becky Porlier, who works for Upper Canada Fibershed. She is actually the founder of this effort. Becky, how about you start off with telling us a bit about your origin story, but can you quickly first just define what Upper Canada is because I’m very clearly wrong here.
So American.
Becky Porlier: That’s fine. So Upper Canada is actually what is now Southern Ontario. And from Montreal, sort of eastward would have been Lower Canada. So this was pre-Confederate, pre-Canada times when, you know, it’s a very colonial moment.
Ross Kenyon: It’s like the Nile, the Upper Egypt, right? It’s like the farther up the Nile you go, that’s Upper Canada.
Becky Porlier: Opposite, I think.
B. Lorraine Smith: That might be one way to look at it, because you are sort of going upriver in the St. Lawrence, but Upper Canada is on Lake Ontario, so I think the metaphor falls apart. Sorry, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, I definitely tried. Oh, and by the way, this is Ross speaking. Kristoff is the other person. We did a weird start, so just in case you’re listening, you want to know who is speaking.
Christophe Jospe: It’ll be a rocky start, but it’ll be a wonderful finish. Hold on, hold on, listener.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, we got Upper Canada, and then...
Becky Porlier: Yeah, so I guess my story, I grew up in London, Ontario, so a rather small city in southern Ontario. I was a bit of an outdoor kid, always had environmental leanings. I can remember when the Exxon Valdez disaster happened, and I think I was probably in grade three, and that was just infuriating and Looking back, I can’t believe how interested I was in the environment. So I’ve always been drawn to ecology. And in my undergrad, I actually studied anthropology because I was curious about how material culture influences our decisions about ecological systems.
And in my master’s, I studied capacity development and extension with international development. And there I was really interested in food sovereignty and food security. So I was looking at I was really inspired by Alice Waters, actually, and her whole idea of having kids learn how to cook and eating on real plate. And that the food culture was really a reflection of the more general culture and our understanding of how we treat the environment. And so from there, I actually discovered the blog of Rebecca Burgess while I was working on a farm and got really interested in textile systems.
Ross Kenyon: I think for both of those name drops, we’re coming for you. We’re coming to Berkeley. Alice, you’re in the sights. Rebecca Burgess, I’m sure we’ll have Fibershed on here too.
Christophe Jospe: Amazing. So fiber shed, what is a fiber shed?
Becky Porlier: So a fiber shed is a geography. It’s a way of thinking about a resource base, so much like a food shed or a watershed. It’s the region from which you can source all the labor materials and skills that you need to make clothing and other textiles. And its purpose is to draw your attentions back to the landscape and to be more conscious and aware of the decisions that you’re making that go into how you clothe yourself.
B. Lorraine Smith: So one of the things that comes up when I listen to the Fibershed story, and there’s some amazing videos on your website and the one that I guess headquartered, would you say the main hub of Fibershed is in California and you’re almost like a chapter?
Becky Porlier: Absolutely. So we are actually an official. So the fiber shed that Rebecca Burgess started in California is the we affectionately call it the mothership. And they have, I think there’s 20 plus affiliates around the world. So the Upper Canada fiber shed was, I think, the first affiliate in Canada. And yeah, we’ve been around almost the longest.
B. Lorraine Smith: Yeah, so here we are on the Reversing Climate Change podcast. So obviously, we think there’s something about climate here, but I’m going to flash back to when I first heard about Fibershed, because I think that’s how many people experience it for the first time. And I’d love for you to Draw the full circle around the climate piece for us. Listeners can’t see, but I have a hat here on the table, which is a hand spun, hand knit hat made from yarn fleece produced in Ontario, which I accessed as a hand spinner and knitter because I first learned about Upper Canada Fibershed through my Mm hmm.
Unknown speaker: Mm hmm.
Becky Porlier: So it’s twofold. If you look at the way that clothing is produced now, it’s highly extractive based on the fossil fuel extraction. Most fibers that we wear are acrylic and polyester. So that’s a... All of the dyes are fossil fuels. Combined with a garment traveling more than I do, traveling the globe a couple times before it reaches your closet, it’s a highly intensive carbon footprint. So it’s about 37 tonnes of CO2 released per ton of fashion. It’s the second dirtiest industry in the world. And if you look at a fiber shed system, it’s the complete opposite.
It’s based in a community environment. So you automatically take out that travel time. It also starts at the soil. So we’re looking at natural fibers, agricultural products. So wool, hemp, linen, cotton. These can all be grown in regenerative ways that restores carbon back into the soil. So a fiber shed looks at a soil-to-soil lifecycle analysis. So that system starts on the farm, continues through the milling, The processing, the designing, sewing, and cutting, and then at the end of that garment’s life cycle, it can actually be composted and returned to the soil.
The really exciting part, and this is based on the research that Rebecca and Fibershed have done in California, is that if you apply a very thin layer of compost to the rangeland where the sheep are grazing, that has a benefit of increasing a significant amount of carbon. And if you factor in best case scenario milling process, so let’s say that there’s solar panels and some water recycling, you can actually get a garment that is either carbon neutral or carbon beneficial over its entire life cycle.
Christophe Jospe: And when you say carbon beneficial, that means you have negative carbon, more carbons added to the soil.
Becky Porlier: Yes.
Ross Kenyon: For so much better than carbon negative, which we, negative emissions and all that stuff, we... The terminology is still being worked out, but I like that one, carbon beneficial.
Becky Porlier: They put a positive spin on it. So you think of, okay, I’m going to purchase this sweater that’s carbon beneficial. And instead of releasing X number of tonnes or whatever of CO2, you’re actually putting it into the ground. And when you think about how much clothing is consumed by North Americans, that is a significant amount of carbon that could go back into the soil. So...
B. Lorraine Smith: This is a great story. I love it. And as a spinner, a knitter by hobby, I guess you’d say, I’m delighted to participate in this. But when I imagine my friends who produce fiber, so my shepherd friends and other farmers, and think of the conversations we have, I mostly think about how hard they work, like the physical labor involved in managing sheep and the sort of day in, day out of what they do. How does this or does this climate story land for them? Are they changing what they’re doing in order to engage with a fiber shed conversation?
Or is it happening anyway? And how much extra work or less work, extra income or less income? What does this mean for the shepherdess and her 80 Shetland sheep?
Becky Porlier: That’s an interesting question. And so in our fiber shed in southern Ontario, we’ve actually focused more on reconnecting the community that has been quite dislocated. And we haven’t really gotten to the point of being able to think about how we would initiate any sort of carbon plan yet. And from the initial discussions that I’ve had with farmers, we don’t want to talk about carbon farming. It gets into climate change discussions and politics and... It’s more, let’s talk about how do we enhance the soil? What are the benefits there? It’s actually, it’s kind of a tricky conversation.
So yeah, we’ve been focusing more on how do we bring the community together to look at what we can actually produce right now? How do we address the very significant issues in our supply chain? And how do we regrow that supply chain so that we can start having these other types of conversations?
B. Lorraine Smith: Yeah, it’s interesting. And I know, Ross and Christophe, I know you folks have conversations with some of the larger companies out there as you’re engaging and developing your marketplace. And I see as an advisor to some companies thinking about climate and their actions on it, I’m seeing or at least hearing rumors of and seeing some progressive announcements from companies like the North Face or Patagonia or others who are making noises about climate beneficial wool and I guess what I’m looking for is, is there a bridge between those pretty big recognized brands, those logos, those, you know, garments you can see in pretty mainstream stores around the world even, and those small scale farmers and producers that are really part of this network you’re trying to grow?
Or where do you see that going? Because often the scale question comes up, right? Like, this is really neat what you guys are doing. Oh, that’s such a beautiful hat. Or maybe you think it’s an ugly hat. But there’s only one. And we need 700,000 of those to make a difference. So how does that bridge get built between the big brands, the globally recognized folks, and the individual farmers on the ground for that scale?
Becky Porlier: Well, it is a beautiful hat for those who can’t see it. It’s gorgeous. Super cozy. And I think that your question is actually the crux of what we’re trying to do is we’re focusing right now on developing these prototypes because people aren’t even allowed to imagine that this is possible. So we are trying to give people space to even consider their clothing as being something that could have such a large impact, while also trying to get that investment. For us, it’s we need a mill. We need to have... And I think we’d be off to the races because we have examples such as the Peggy Sue Collection who at Toronto Women Fashioned.
She had her entire supply chain walk down the runway with her because she could do that. She was based in Fibershed Ethos. So she had hand-woven gorgeous wool and alpaca coats that were stunning that people could wear. People wanted to just snatch up and sell, you know, by the hundreds, but it wasn’t possible at the scale that we’re at in Ontario. She would have to outsource most of it to the states and she just wasn’t willing to compromise. So we need to have the larger companies, the industry sort of look to these smaller prototypes and say, how do we get involved in that?
How can we support this? What do you need? We need about a million dollars to start a mill.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve heard similar things for local sourcing with food. I know groups like Chipotle will look for local pig farmers and stuff like that. But I feel a bit ignorant because I hadn’t heard this for fiber yet. Although my wife’s family, they’re Lithuanian-American. I spend a lot of time back there in Lithuania. And whenever I am there, I love like, it’s a little bit derivative, but I love the like Peaky Blinders wool clothing kind of thing. So I’ll go back there and be like, go to a tailor and be like, cut me a pair of beautiful Angora pants.
Give me like the finest fabric I can. And it’s quite affordable if you’re in those parts of the world. But that clearly isn’t as scalable. That’s highly customized, right? But this is looking at it more like the Chipotle model, but for fiber. Is that correct?
Becky Porlier: Yes. You’re going to have to be a little bit more specific with the Chipotle model.
Ross Kenyon: It’s not like they just buy from one big CAFO, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Kristoff. I knew he was over there just running.
Christophe Jospe: Okay, well, let me ask the question in a different way. If I walk into a North Face here in Montreal, or a North Face in Seattle, Washington, where we’re based, or a North Face, I don’t know, somewhere down under in Australia, I would expect that it’s the same...
Unknown speaker: That was a better way of asking it, yes.
Becky Porlier: This is actually one of the things that I get really excited about thinking about, and it comes down to color. We talk a lot about natural dyes, so dyes that come from plants and tree bark and, you know, just things that you can find. So what is available in southern Ontario is different than what’s available in northern Ontario. So I have a lot of lakes and I live in the boreal forest now and we have something called rock tripe and you don’t have to. We have that in Southern Ontario. And rock tripe gives a very beautiful purple color.
But we don’t have black walnut where I live. And black walnut grows all over Southern Ontario, and that would provide a very dark brown. So if we were to actually hyper-regionalize our clothing systems and use the Fibershed model, you would have very distinct differences in how people dress and even the colors that they wear. You could look at somebody and say, hey, I recognize that color palette. You must be from Upper Canada. Or you must be from, you know, Seattle.
Ross Kenyon: It’s like going to Guatemala or something and you can see and be like, oh, they’re from this highland. This is from Chichicastananga. This is like their outfit. Kind of like that.
Becky Porlier: Yeah, exactly. But I mean, that’s taking it to the extreme. And I just use that as an example of how beautiful this system is, that it’s so diverse and it’s so distinct. And even when we look at the Californian fiber shed versus ours, we can’t grow cotton in Southern Ontario. So we have to rely on what’s here, whereas they have a lot of very gorgeous colored cotton. Yeah, I think it’s an interesting challenge, but it’s just an interesting way of thinking about things too.
B. Lorraine Smith: Yeah, I get very excited about this too, because I think we have a model that’s already working called biodiversity in nature. You know, we have this amazing handbook that we put down for a little while when we industrialized, but it’s still there on the shelf. And whenever we’re ready to read it, it’s got all the information we need. And I love that you mentioned cotton, because one of the things I learned first as a textile artisan, and then as somebody working in industry and going a Large industrial supply chains was just how badly we treated, for example, the range of cotton cultivars out there, such that, you know, once upon a time, there were at least hundreds, if not thousands that were actively grown and spun, many of which were not white, and many of which had different staple lengths, so the length of the fiber.
But Spinners and then mechanized spinners preferred identical fibers. And industry, of course, wants predictability. So hence, we now only have really three varieties of cotton in the marketplace and they all happen to be white. But cotton never wanted to be white. You know, cotton wanted to be cotton. And so I feel like what we’re really learning through the fiber shed model is to remember where we came from and I think it’s really neat. It’s, of course, not coincidental that this is coming up at the Soil Symposium, because here we’re exploring the role of biodiversity, both to understand it and value it, but also to recognize its role in restoring ecosystems.
And there’s lots of reasons to want to restore ecosystems. It makes us feel good. They’re beautiful. There’s many services they provide. But I think we’re also recognizing collectively that’s the key to reversing the effects that are underway right now with climate. So... I think the Fibershed model in many ways is an analog that could be informing many other systems, many other industries. And I think it’s only a sort of series of bad decisions that we’ve come to expect the exact same hat in Montreal and Melbourne. And as we grow up as a species, I think we’ll come to the same way now if somebody, if you were standing in a bank and somebody lit a cigarette and started smoking.
Everybody would look and be like, what’s he doing? And that’s not okay. Imagine going into a store and being like, oh, my God, all these hats are the same. That’s so weird. You know, that’s what we’re going to iterate out of.
Ross Kenyon: I think I brought this up on the show before and I’m pretty sure I got it from the author Kevin Carson once upon a time. But basically, like we used to live in an artisan economy because that was what made the most sense economically and materially. And then assembly lines happened and we had industrialization.
Unknown speaker: Was that just a statement Ross?
Ross Kenyon: You may react to it in any way in which you choose.
Christophe Jospe: I’m a used carbon salesman, which means I always have a carbon focus. And so I hear what you’re saying because we talk to farmers all the time and quite often we don’t even utter the words climate change or make this about the climate. But of course we care about the improvement or the addition of carbon to the soils because it rejuvenates the land. But what specifically is it about fiber sheds that actually make them incredible carbon sinks?
Becky Porlier: I think it’s that looking at a system starting at the soil and working your way up. So it’s looking to the different processes that will enhance the soil. And in permaculture, there’s this idea of stacking functions. So food systems are analogous to fiber systems. I mean, we have sheep for lamb and then that’s the wool is a byproduct that can become something else. So I think it’s just it’s inherently built into the system that we’re localizing.
B. Lorraine Smith: And something else I would build on that, that we forget when we talk about textiles because most people are so separated from them. So we don’t have we don’t feel the connection that a lot of the producers and artisans have. But there’s a couple of factors with textiles that make them so powerful as potentially connected to climate solutions. One is really fundamental, which is it’s illegal to leave home waste. Without fabric, you’re just not allowed to go outside naked in most communities. So all of us every single day are connected to textiles.
And just that leverage, kind of like everybody eats, everybody gets dressed. I’m sure we could have fun finding exceptions, but generally speaking, that’s where we’re at as a species. So there’s huge leverage there. And then beyond that, by definition, with Pretty much all of the fiber production, whether it’s plant or animal based in a fiber shed, it’s renewable. So even with animal fiber, so sheep’s wool, mohair, goats, alpaca, even the bunnies for your angora pants, Ross, which I really want to talk to you more about.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve prepared them so many times, but they’re beyond fixing them.
B. Lorraine Smith: All right, well, we can work on that. There’s also the upcycling and mending. But with wool, for most breeds, you’re looking at multiple years of production from one animal. And then, you know, ultimately, those animals die and have other uses. And then the crops that are produced for fiber as well, those are, if managed well, you know, these are renewable resources. So you’ve got these stacked layers, even just conceptually. Everyone plays a role in textiles every single day. Every source of fiber can be produced in a very renewable manner. So I think, no offense to food, but I think fiber and textile has even more potential.
The other thing to bear in mind too, if you have ethical... Queries around animals, and there’s all kinds of reasons to, and I certainly, some thoughts there. Unlike food, textiles have multiple uses, right? They aren’t a single-use product, typically. So many of us have garments that we’ve had for decades. So you, again, you have this additional layer. This isn’t a single use. It’s going to last for years and years and years, and typically locally made Products that are made at a smaller scale may have a higher quality, so you’ve got even more durability.
Becky Porlier: I’ll just quickly say, too, that textiles go beyond clothing. I mean, do you need a texture? Like anything fuzzy, any of this couch, the carpet, insulation, industrial purposes. Wool can be used for so many things. Mass transportation, upholstery. Yeah, exactly.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know if you want to claim that one too hard, but yeah.
B. Lorraine Smith: No, it’s true.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, no, it definitely is true.
B. Lorraine Smith: Automotive and transport. These folks, in fact, I remember seeing about a decade ago, might it be even longer, that there was a time when the norm for airplane upholstery, I’ll have to fact check this after for the show notes, was mohair.
Ross Kenyon: Is this like in the Don Draper days?
B. Lorraine Smith: Maybe. Yeah. So mohair was because a lot of natural fibers are naturally anti-bacterial, but also fire retardant. Flame retardant. So now we dose things with chemicals because they’re petrochemical based, right? Well, petrochemical is like a, you know, it’s like a blowtorch, basically, if there’s any flame involved, whereas natural fibers are much harder So it’s a brilliant substance for interiors, for airplanes, right? Which want that. So it isn’t a stretch. You’re absolutely right. There’s textiles everywhere, not just clothing. It’s a good call.
Ross Kenyon: Kristoff, we went to that Jung Society thing recently, like CS Jung, the old school psychoanalyst. You want to say something?
Christophe Jospe: No, I was just going to say we did. No, we did. I’m curious to see where you’re going to take this question.
Ross Kenyon: Do you remember that they said that because it was about Hermes and technology and busyness and then someone mentioned that the origin of the word Technology is like technis in Greek. It’s closely related to textiles. Textiles is one of the original ways of viewing technology. Have you ever heard this?
Christophe Jospe: Yeah, and so technology is ultimately the study of weaving things together.
Ross Kenyon: There we go. That’s the connection I was looking for.
Becky Porlier: And the Jacquard loom was the originator of the computer, computer programming.
Ross Kenyon: Wait, what?
B. Lorraine Smith: You guys don’t know that. I was going to bring that up too. And then I was thinking, oh, everybody knows that. So jacquard weaving is a form of complex weaving. Weaving is essentially fibers going in at right angles to one another to create a structure with integrity. And there are many ways to do it. And around, I want to say the mid 1800s, a smart fellow with the last name Jacquard developed a system of weaving that involved punch cards. You can probably picture punch cards because they made it into the next century as early computational inputs.
Ross Kenyon: Calculation machines. Right.
B. Lorraine Smith: But weaving is simply a decision as to whether a thread goes over or under. Which is analogous to a one zero. It’s binary. It’s binary.
Unknown speaker: So when you’re there recording a podcast, you’ll pop by.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, very interesting. I had not heard that. You’re assuming a lot of knowledge of textile and textile history from us. I don’t feel like men always give as much attention to where this stuff comes from or even their appearance generally. So I’m learning a lot. Becky, I wanted to ask you too, we didn’t even talk about you personally. Are you involved in raising sheep or some other types of animals? Is that how you got involved in this?
Becky Porlier: So no, it’s really funny that I have, I’m not a farm. I was working on a farm when I got interested in this and I would love to have a farm and I actually do have one now, sort of, starting a flower farm, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyways, but I learned how to knit so that I could make myself a fiber shed garment. I came at this from the total opposite end of what people usually do. Usually they’re textile artists who are interested in the environment and then they find the fiber shed concept and go, that makes sense.
I’m going to do that. I went the other way. I went, whoa, this has a lot of potential. This is an incredible idea. I need to learn everything I can about textiles. So I’m a bit of a generalist, but I’m really good at bringing people together for a shared interest to get stuff done. So that’s pretty much where I landed.
B. Lorraine Smith: Sorry, I’m leaning in because I’m remembering a really neat idea you mentioned yesterday. Can you re-describe the vision you had of these systems coming together?
Becky Porlier: Oh my gosh. Yes.
B. Lorraine Smith: Or at least knit it together.
Becky Porlier: Turn me off.
B. Lorraine Smith: So it’s true. We did. We had a far ranging conversation. You described somebody, you know, I think in your family or connected to who’s deep into a kind of engineering that we don’t really associate with the fiber shed world. Right. And then these pods of really... emergent and exciting regenerative activity in the fiber shed world. Yes. These missing links.
Becky Porlier: Right. Right. Okay. So my brother-in-law actually works in aerospace. He is the guy that figures out how to build the machines that build the airplanes. So he’s Incredibly gifted at that. But his thing is that he wants to make systems more efficient and just make it easier for people overall. And we’ve been talking a lot about how the supply chain, this wool supply chain is... Eons old. It probably hasn’t been updated in the last hundred years. So that there’s probably ways that we can look to other industries. You wouldn’t think of building airplanes as being related to wool, except for what we just described in upholstery, but taking that idea and trying to blend, you know, get people together in the same room and how is this actually going to work?
Ross Kenyon: I have two questions and I think maybe we can start wrapping it up or getting close, but just how bad is fast fashion? And two, is it not just incredibly weird that our clothes are made out of petroleum? As you mentioned, we glossed over it as if you’re like, oh yeah, it’s totally normal. I’ve seen the labels, it’s all polyester. But how did that outcompete natural fibers? How did that even happen? Are these separate podcast questions entirely?
Becky Porlier: Yeah. Yeah, you could definitely, you should do a whole podcast on fast fashion. It’s horrible. So I don’t like to go there because it is really dark when you start learning about this industry and what it does to people. You might remember a few years ago, there was the Rana Plaza disaster where 1300 garment workers died because they were working in horrendous conditions.
Ross Kenyon: Was it like the triangle shirtwaist in New York back in the day?
Unknown speaker: Oh, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: But wasn’t that like a tenth the number? I didn’t realize 1,300. I hadn’t heard this before.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah. Were you living under a rock? This was huge news. And I actually think it caused waves in the fashion industry where, to some extent, at least it was, we need to wake up and improve our PR image. And the only way we can improve our PR image is actually to do better and treat people fairly. And I think as a consumer, at least, I bought clothes at H&M. I don’t go there anymore. Not to single out one company, but...
Ross Kenyon: I’ve bought clothes from there that have been torn in the same day.
Christophe Jospe: Just because it’s poor clothing.
Ross Kenyon: Anyways, let’s get back on track.
Christophe Jospe: We’re derailing you.
Ross Kenyon: You don’t have to say bad things about fast fashion if you don’t want to, but it definitely deserves its own show.
Becky Porlier: It does. It’s terrible. I mean, it’s polluting waterways. There’s not a lot of transparency, even the whole system. It’s really difficult to find out who is actually making the clothing because it’s contractor after contractor. We used to have a very thriving Living garment industry in North America, but I don’t think that’s what we’re trying to recreate because that also has, I mean, this is why we have labor laws is because of garment workers in New York saying, I can’t work in these conditions. This is insane. Nobody should. But instead of really addressing the problem, we just kind of outsourced it.
So we’re not in any way saying that let’s bring back a garment industry that was like it was in the 1800s because that’s horrible for everybody. We need to update this so that it respects human dignity, so that people have a living wage and that this is not so environmentally destructive.
B. Lorraine Smith: I think it’s also a wider system conversation. I mean, I definitely recall the Rana Plaza disaster. It happened because the conditions were normal. So it sounds like an anomaly and I feel terribly about what happened, but the truth is the same things are happening all the time still, and they were before. So it wasn’t really an anomaly in that sense. And I don’t hold H&M Personally responsible because of course H&M isn’t a person. I think we collectively have a role to play. And I think that lands us beautifully in this Living Soil Symposium, which is in many ways about interconnectedness and how each of us has a role.
We’re responsible for connections. We can contribute to the whole. And then that generates the conditions that enable life to thrive. And I’m obviously just paraphrasing what Michelle Holliday put on stage earlier today. But that really resonated and I think it has huge impact when we think about textiles. We are all connected to them. We don’t want to recreate the old supply chains that had their own problems. The reason that there’s a Rana Plaza is because those old supply chains didn’t work either. So we iterated our way past them. I think it’s our opportunity and I think Fibershed makes it that much more likely to happen to imagine what does it look like when we get it right?
When colored cotton is considered a beautiful thing, not an anomaly to be weeded out. And when Those shepherds raising those smaller flocks are rewarded for their work. And the consumer is happy with what he or she is buying. So that fast fashion is a bad memory, just like smoking in a bank, right? It just wouldn’t be done. Maybe banks are also a bad memory by then too. But I think it’s more than possible. And I don’t think it’s about highlighting one or two bad practices, because I interpret those practices as elements of the current system.
I think it’s about understanding the possibilities of a new and better system and then moving towards that.
Christophe Jospe: I totally agree with that statement. And just to kind of pile on the optimistic commentary, I am optimistic that influencers who recognize that they can change people’s mindset by saying, hey, I’m wearing clothes of this certain way. It’s okay to wear things that look different and don’t all have the same thing because it matters to me where my clothes come from. And your point, Lorraine, that People do these things every day, which is put on clothes. If we can become more conscious about the clothes that we put on, it’s just that small tweak, which actually can filter the entire industry.
So it’s not like a technology problem. It’s a human coordination problem. We want climate beneficial food. We want climate beneficial clothing. And if consumers start demanding this, this can create a real shift in the industry. So maybe to put it back to you, Rebecca, in your theory of change and fiber sheds happening as quickly as possible and shifting the entire fashion industry, how do you see all this going down?
Becky Porlier: I think it starts with consumer demand. And I think people need to be asking for these things, even if it’s just, you know, I’m looking for wool or I’m looking for 100% organic cotton and starting there and then trying to make those connections. Where were my clothes grown and where were they sewn? Was the color mined or was it grown somewhere? I think just shifting those perceptions is incredibly powerful and just, yeah, trying to reconnect that system, reconnect with your landscape and get to know some fiber farmers.
Ross Kenyon: I still want to talk about that petroleum question. Oh, Back to it. We should start wrapping up, though. And this is too much. We should talk about it some other time. But how did natural fiber lose in the marketplace for so long?
B. Lorraine Smith: I’ll just jump in and say it’s cheaper. So the petroleum-based, we have had for so long so much access to cheap feedstock from underground. Those were decisions, right? So as a society, we made decisions that paid less for the things that did more harm.
Christophe Jospe: And we never internalized the impact of extracting the fossil fuels or adding carbon to the atmosphere. But back to your consumer question, for the listeners on this podcast, where can they go to learn more? What can they do? How can they find out more about your fiber shed and other fiber sheds? Yeah.
Becky Porlier: So you can check out the original Fibershed, and that’s with an ER, Fibershed. And the Upper Canada Fibershed is... Fibershed. Fibershed. Yeah, we have the Canadian spelling. And there’s affiliate Fibersheds all over, so there’s probably one in your community. And if there isn’t, then you should probably start one.
Ross Kenyon: Well, that’s great. And thank you, Becky, for being here with us. That was very fun.
Becky Porlier: Thank you so much.
Ross Kenyon: Looking forward to spending time with you the rest of this conference. And for Lorraine...
B. Lorraine Smith: Oh, stop.
Ross Kenyon: Thank you for guest hosting. We’ll have to do more of that. This is also maybe the perfect episode for you to chime in on, given your textile knowledge. I feel like such a novice on it. It was no coincidence. It was no coincidence. Very happy to have had the backup.
B. Lorraine Smith: My pleasure. And just to note that the weaving computer connection is really what made blockchain possible. So you, Nori Knots, have... Weaving, spinning and fiber to thank for your burgeoning marketplace.
Ross Kenyon: Trying a little hard to just put that in there.
B. Lorraine Smith: Not at all.
Christophe Jospe: The fabric that connects us all together just got a little stronger.
B. Lorraine Smith: It was beyond obvious to me. I don’t know what else to say. Thanks, guys. Great to be here. Thanks so much.
Ross Kenyon: Yes. And if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes. That definitely helps a lot. Check out our other podcast, Carbon Removal Newsroom. Thanks so much for being here, everyone.
