London Fashion Week goes all eco....

My attention was grabbed by an article in the Guardian (reproduced here) which featured a whole slew of names showing their latest eco-friendly and/or fair trade designs on the catwalk this week. You could be excused for getting the impression that the whole British fashion scene has gone ethical (it hasn't) but nevertheless the breadth of designers showing their ethical fashions is truly encouraging.

Whether in a "eco-collective" such as the Conscious Designers Collective (it would be rude to suggest that London Fashion Week designers by nature spend most of their time unconscious) or Esthetica (a London based sustainable fashion initiative) or a snazzy underwear producer "Pants to Poverty" or ultimate recycled fashion in the shape of Junky Styling, there's clearly a lot going on.

In amidst all this, Defra (no not a fashion label, it stands for Deparment For Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but you knew that didn't you?) launched its new Sustainable Clothing Action Plan.

"The Sustainable Clothing Roadmap has brought together over 300 organisations, from high street retailers, to designers and textile manufacturers to battle the environmental impacts of 'throw away fashion'. Companies and some of the biggest names in fashion have signed up to take actions to make a significant difference to the environmental footprint and social inequalities which blight some of the production and retail processes of consumer fashion."

It's good to see Continental Clothing (our supplier of organic t-shirts) and featuring prominently in a separate Guardian article on this initiative. Of course there's a slew of other bigger names in there, like M&S, Tesco and Sainsbury - they'll no doubt not be stopping selling throwaway clothing but at least will be featuring more prominently lines which are ethically produced and will last more than two washes.....

Why 2009 can be better!

Here we are in the dying hours of 2008, many people will be look back thinking that this was not a great year, how times were so much better earlier in the decade and how 2009 will simply be worse on all fronts.

But 2008 could also be looked at as being the great cleanser - the year that people behind the easy money got found out and the rest of us got educated about the fact that if there is a fast buck to be made then almost inevitably, in the long term, there is some cost. Unfortunately the cost has been borne by many people, not necessarily those who made the fast buck in the first place.

2009 will be a year in which those who believe in ethical ways of conducting life - and business - can come forward with confidence and make a stand against those who present the more enticing, exciting options. Of course many businesses need to innovative and take risks - and there the risk takers will get their way but the new ethic of risk taking should be that the risk taker sees the losses when it goes wrong and there is little or no 'collateral damage'. The age of banks taking risks in such a way that every one of us sees the after effect when the quest for the fast buck goes wrong must be behind us.

While Gordon Brown might not turn out to be the person who saves the world, in 2009 there will be the great new hope for the planet - in the shape of Barack Obama. His ethics and idealism seem to be just what we need - the issue is whether he will be strong enough to overcome the entrenched interests of those who got us into this mess. For those who might otherwise look forward to 2009 with nothing but pessimism, Obama presents the potential for a new ethical outlook from the top and exciting changes that could touch us all.

Things might be tough along the way but 2009 will be the year of the new clean slate, a year of opportunity for us all to bring the excesses under control and put in place firm foundations for future growth.

Even Walmart's doing it!

Corporate Social Responsibility ("CSR") is one of the buzz terms of the new wider consensus on the need to act ethically in business. Over at the Ethical Corporation blog I detect some concern about the effect that the recession will have on corporate behaviour. Will corners be cut and blind eyes turned when it comes to keeping up standards?

Well not at WalMart apparently. Through the EC blog I found this article at the Financial Times where it seems Walmart's intentions are to push its supplier's harder on their CSR standards. I particularly liked the quote from Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's chief executive, told a meeting of more than 1,000 suppliers in Beijing, many no doubt in the clothing industry.

"Meeting social and environmental standards is not optional. A company that cheats on overtime and on the age of its labour, that dumps its scraps and its chemicals in our rivers, that does not pay its taxes or honour its contracts - will ultimately cheat on the quality of its products."

I trust that Mr Scott had checked out that WalMart's tax position was squeaky clean before lecturing his suppliers!

Anyway, it's a good message and heartening to hear it put forcibly in China by what may be Chinese industry's biggest customer.

Get Ethical!

The Christmas shopping season is upon us - it seems it was already there in some shops a couple of months ago - but it is around now when most people start thinking about arrangements for Christmas. I know that my shopping will start on or about 22nd December - but then I am a man!

Pier 32 is a member of Ethical Junction, the UK's premier directory of ethical suppliers. In a new collaboration with Get Ethical, www.getethical.com, the long established online originally started in 2001 by The Big Issue as an impartial portal to the world of online ethical merchandise, all suppliers on Get Ethical are now members of Ethical Junction who help monitor the credentials of the suppliers. So why not start you Christmas shopping experience by exploring what is on offer here?

We don't sell on the site because it's geared up to supplying off the shelf products. But as a fast reliable route to a one off Christmas present it's going to be difficult to beat.

"Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts"

The night before last I caught up with the first episode on BBC's iPlayer - last night at 9pm was the second of this reality TV program that takes 6 young fashionistas out of their cosy existences in the UK and plants them for 6 episodes covering 6 weeks into various clothes production plants in New Dehli, India.

We did not find out too much about the lives of the Indian workers and what they think of their lot but we did hear from owners and managers of the factories and the families in the homes in which they work.

The first factory produced clothes for M&S, Zara etc. It was bright, clean, HUGE - state of the art for India apparently. The workers were paid by the hour but clearly were expected to work hard (no chatting!) in a mind numbingly boring environment in which they were each one part of a production line for a garment. I was not clear how long the working day was but it was a lot longer than the 7 hours most of us enjoy in the UK.

The pay? About £1.20 per day. Now you may say, everything's cheaper in India. Well, some things are cheaper in India but our young participants found that buying a can of antiperspirant will cost that day's wages. Now I don't think I would quite class that factory as a sweatshop but clearly you can't afford to sweat....

(It was not actually antiperspirant - my invention - that was being bought but something equally basic to us in the West and very similar in cost).

The group then encountered another way to afford a can of antiperspirant - work in a small back street factory producing 'fashion' clothing. Here there is no production line; you produce a whole garment and get paid piece rate. At approximately 15p per garment you have to produce 8 to buy that anti-antiperspirant. Here the workers might normally turn in 18 hour days in order to make what they can at the piece work rate.

Of course these programmes were being filmed in establishments where permission had been given to film. Who know what lies beyond?

The trouble with programmes like this is that they play on the temper tantrums of the young participants to add some drama while the diligent work of the Indian's making these clothes for us largely goes unnoticed. But the point should get across to the young BBC3 audience.

I suppose I should not get uptight about what I describe as a "mind numbingly boring environment". It's what many of our western ancestors used to work in after the industrial revolution, after they moved away from working on the land. And the standard of living is probably better than our own industrial revolution ancestors too - they did not have antiperspirant either.

But what grates, and what we all should remember, is that our relatively lazy lifestyle and spare time to enjoy a service industry culture is based on the toil of the people who make our 'things' for us. Which is why we should give a little thanks in return next time we buy a t-shirt by being careful about what we choose.

Ethical choices for Valentines Day!

Out of curiosity on this day for lovers (everywhere?) I googled 'ethical valentines clothing' to see what turned up. I am quite pleased that I did not find anyone marketing specific ethical clothing for Valentines day consumption - use once a year (or once only!) somehow clashing with my idea of ethics. I did however find two interesting tidbits in amongst the more commercial fayre:

• Here's a last minute gift idea - over on the Action Aid site are some great off beat offerings so you can buy a pair of goats to help a family in Africa, plant cocoa tree seedlings or even buy a beehive on behalf of your Valentine - ActionAid will then send an e-card to your Valentine outlining your generosity. (Incidentally, Action Aid are one of our clients here at Pier 32)
• The UK's Department of International Development have set up a page on their website extolling us to "Buy ethical gifts on Valentine's Day to help make poverty history" with encouragement to buy Kenyan roses explaining how "Roses flown in from Africa can use less energy than those grown in Europe". It's about the wasteful heat need to grow them in greenhouses close to home.

We like the Action Aid offering - get out there and buy the ultimate Valentine's gift - not a coat, a goat!

So what did you expect?

George Bush insists that global warming is best dealt with by voluntary measures undertaken by business

but.....

Accenture survey as presented yesterday in 'The Independent' shows "nearly nine in ten of 10 of them do not rate it as a priority".

Ah well.

Can a successful business be ethical?

The world is full of people who run businesses to the highest ethical standards - and fail. Many of these people look at successful small and large businesses and perceive an element of ruthlessness in business which they lack. They comfort themselves with the higher moral ground of their ethics, thinking that if their successful rival prosper then someone, somewhere must be suffering.

Were this to be the case then big successful businesses must surely create havoc amongst their suppliers, staff and customers. Do they merely pay lip service to their fancy ethical statements? After all Enron (apparently) had a 64 page "Code of Ethics".

The companies that throw themselves open to the most detailed examination are those that wear their ethics as the badge of their trade. Were I an oil / nuclear comany executive feeling a little heat of publicity then what better to get off the front page than to send out some investigators to dig some dirt on the squeaky clean?

Or why not simply buy into ethics? Who might I choose as a target? A company like Body Shop perhaps...

In April 2006 came the headline in The Independent "Body Shop's Popularity Plunges after L'Oreal Sale" "An index that tracks public perception of more than 1,000 consumer brands found that "satisfaction" with Body Shop had slumped by almost half".

The big ethical 'thing' with Body Shop is animal testing. None of its products or ingredients are tested by Body Shop or its suppliers on animals. Even though L'Oreal itself had stopped animal testing in 1989, it does admit that some of its suppliers test ingredients on animals......

Another trigger in this slump in Body Shop satisfaction was apparently that L'Oreal is owned to the tune of 26% by Nestle - corporate evil incarnate "voted the world's least responsible company in an internet poll". Anti Nestle campaigners (principally on the baby milk to third world issue) used this as another stick to hit Nestle with and Body Shop's reputation was a casualty.

(Incidentally, the internet poll is the UK's YouGov survey BrandIndex -possibly a nice guide to who the saints and sinners of the corporate world are perceived to be. However - its not measuring ethical performance - Chanel and Dior's position at the top of their relevant league is largely down to their product smelling somewhat better than Body Shop's. At least that's the perception).

But Body Shop is a separate entity to L'Oreal or Nestle. The better it does then the more money passes up the chain and the more the owners of the bigger businesses will notice that ethical branding and action actually pays. Hard headed people running these businesses will know better than to meddle with the ethical position of Body Shop and look to strengthen their own ethical positions. In today’s environment, that is a real possibility rather than just wishful thinking.

Body Shop are back near the top of all the tables in the BrandIndex survey. They will continue to be known as the company that is "Against Animal Testing". They were awarded 2006 Best Cruelty-free Cosmetics by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatments of Animals).In terms of fair trade sourcing they have "31 community trade suppliers in 24 countries" (see their Principle and Policies) and perhaps they could do better here because £5m (Body Shop's figure from July 2006) is spent on supplies from this programme against retail sales of £486m, and cost of those sales of £167m (source the 2006 Annual Report). What happens further down the supply chain in this area is more opaque than Adidas (say) because the emotional edge of ethics in the cosmetics industry is Animal Testing while in the clothing industry it's Child Labour. It's to Body Shop's credit here (and clever too) that they set the agenda for the whole cosmetics industry while for Adidas they were the victims. But Adidas are doing many things right and they top BrandIndex's sports industry's league.

Back to the question, can a successful business be ethical? Unquestionably yes - and more so today than ever previously it's becoming a requirement. Big corporations with dubious activities no doubt look for peripheral areas in which they can appear ethical but at least today ethics are there at the table.

Ethics and the supply chain

In a recent entry we highlighted the existence of child labour in cotton production in Uzbekistan. We would want to have nothing to do with garments manufactured from this cotton and fortunately because our supply chain is often relatively short, we can look through our suppliers to their sources.

In other cases we may source big brand clothing through an intermediary. Here we have to rely on the ethical statements issued by those companies to make a judgement on what we are dealing with.

But are ethical statements worth the paper that they are written on? To some extent large companies like Adidas, Hanes and Fruit of the Loom can be expected to behave in line with their ethical policies purely because of the microscope that big brands come under. That microscope means that some unpleasant exceptions emerge; we have to accept that - without the exceptions there might be no microscope and complacency would reign.

We found an interesting paper by Alan Night, Head of Social Responsibility for Kingfisher PLC here in the UK. It serves to highlight the complexities of ensuring that a supply chain is ethical for a group selling thousands of products some of which are made from parts sourced from tens of manufactures. Of course it's not possible to make sure that all is ethical - in an example that he talks of lampshade made from translucent sea shells sourced in the Phillipines. Here Kingfisher got themselves involved with the original shell farmers to help ensure a fair deal but you have to know that this is a tiny fragment of all the disparate elements that go to supply B&Q and Woolworths and other big name stores. The shells are even just a small part of that lampshade. While the help to the shell farmers is inevitably a little bit of a stunt one has to feel some sympathy with the dilemma of an organisation selling such a wide range of products.

We are perhaps fortunate that we are at the end of the cotton clothing supply chain, particularly because of the big name fashion participants, this is one that gets press coverage to keep its participants on their toes. When one looks at Woolworths Pick and Mix stand in comparison, just what are the chances of there being rogue elements of exploitation amidst all those sweet treats?

The supply chain may be smaller but we are not complacent. When a supplier sports an accreditation from an independent organisation vouching for ethical sourcing we know that there are questions to be asked:

• Is that independent organisation truly independent?
• In a world of bogus university degrees, is it real?
• How often are inspections made?
• Does a supplier's name appear on that organisation's website as a company that is audited?

One of the biggest names in the ethical and fair trade field is the Fairtrade Foundation. What does that Fairtrade logo mean? Well, it may be put on a composite product if more than 50% of its ingredients, by dry weight, are sourced from Fairtrade certified producer organizations. So what of the remaining 49%?

And does a Fairtrade logo mean that the employees in a organisation have been fairly treated? Probably, but not necessarily: Fairtrade explains that "Ethical trading means companies are involved in a process of trying to ensure that the basic labour rights of the employees of their third world suppliers are respected. The FAIRTRADE Mark, which applies to products rather than companies, aims to give disadvantaged small producers more control over their own lives. It addresses the injustice of low prices by guaranteeing that producers receive fair terms of trade and fair prices".

It's a fact of life that things are never going to be perfect. Both Fairtrade and Woolworths have to be prepared to compromise. We can reasonably conclude that a store selling only Fairtrade products is probably a more reliable place to shop ethically than Woolworths. But then what if their staff have lower pay and worse conditions than Woolworths staff?

We all have to make judgements. There are often few facts, there may be claims and assurances, there are surrounding circumstances.

In the scheme of things we are a relatively small fish in a big global textile sea. We cannot afford to visit factories to check on suppliers' claims ourselves but we use our common sense to sift out the garments that have the best claims to a full ethical supply chain. When it comes to brands, we know that the catalogue of our largest wholesale supplier contains some brands where we know little about their ethical polices. We have raised this as an important issue with that supplier and until clarification is obtained we are inclined not to use those brands in printing our t-shirts.

What of our smaller suppliers? Sometimes, when we buy direct from a manufacturer (as in the case of Continental or Starworld) their t-shirts are made from cotton that they have purchased themselves. Here we are able to talk directly to the manufacturer. We may look at other circumstances, look at certificates obtained from organisations such as Fair Wear Foundation. If we know that a garment is truly organic because of Soil Association certification, or meets the Oeko-Tex Standards then these environmental certifications adds a little to a picture.

What our customers can do is talk to us about what is important to them. We can at least give them a choice and certainly we can do out utmost to match customers to suppliers that meet their ethical and other demands.