#neatstreets

There's something strange going on in Villiers Street, in the heart of London. And it might just change the way we think about a big urban problem.
Litter is one thing we humans are really good at creating. It just seems to appear, wherever we are (or, in some cases, in places where we've never been seen: take the phenomenon of ocean plastic). The thing is, half the time we don't even realise we're leaving it. It just seems to be there, and there's not much we can do about it.
Well, that's rubbish. And patently untrue. All it takes is a little education and positive reinforcement to keep Britain tidy. Which is why our pals at Hubbub are doing a little thought experiment in Villiers Street, near Charing Cross, to help people keep it a little cleaner and neater. Hence the hashtag: #neatstreets.

Would you want to drop litter on Julien's street? Course you wouldn't!

There's some clever stuff going on here. Empathy is part of the mix: if you care about somewhere, you're less likely to mess it up. So Hubbub are putting up posters featuring the guys and girls that work in the area, tying a place to a face. There's humour involved too: one of the bins on Villiers Street will belch and munch when it's fed on your rubbish.
How about the sticky issue of chewing gum, which seems to be a permanent fixture on our streets, under tables in pubs and restarants, on the soles of our shoes...? Well, here Hubbub have teamed up with Gumdrop, an initiative seeking to recycle old gum into new products like coffee cups and wellies. After all, chewing gum is effectively just flavoured rubber. Using Gumdrops-On-The-Go, a neat solution to what you do with the stuff once it's lost its minty freshness, the hope is to cut right back on the grey spackling that dots every paving slab in the city and do something useful with it.

Don't drop it... Gumdrop it!

It's a fascinating experiment, and here at the Pier we'll be intrigued to see what comes of it. Could this be the first street that leads the way to a cleaner capital?
For more on Hubbub and #neatstreets, check the link: https://www.hubbub.org.uk/a-litter-bit-of-this-and-that

Aftershocks

It's happening again.
A fire in a footwear manufacturing factory in Manila claimed the lives of over seventy workers earlier this month. The fire is believed to have been started by welding work at the factory entrance, which sparked an explosive reaction in the chemicals used to make the flip-flops in which the building specialised.
Most of the victims are believed to have succumbed to the thick smoke from burning rubber and chemicals, which produced flames so intense that the jewelry the victims wore had melted or fallen off. They were recovered mostly from the second floor, where wire gratings over the windows may have impeded escape. Identification of those who died is being hampered by the severity of their burns.
Acting national police chief Leonardo Espina told reporters,

"Definitely there will be charges here, because people died. Regardless of whether it was an accident or arson, people died. We are just determining what exactly happened so that we can clearly define what charges to file."

Meanwhile, a knock-on effect to the earthquakes in Nepal is causing concern in the fashion factories of Bangladesh. At least two buildings have been deemed to have suffered substantial damage to their foundations as a result of the aftershocks, which were felt throughout the sub-continent. It remains unclear as to whether these companies are still trading, or how many others like it continue to allow workers through their doors while their buildings are in a dangerously compromised condition.
Yet again, we find ourselves in a position where people's lives are being endangered or lost in unsafe factories. Meanwhile, the huge multi-national companies who provide the financial reason for those factories being there do little or nothing to help. It's becoming clear that it took US trade sanctions against Bangladesh to kickstart the BFSA. If not for that, little would have changed. Let's be clear. When we talk about the fashion business, the emphasis is strongly on the second word.
The awful truth is that when there's money to be made, life can be very cheap indeed.

Go Wild With WWF!

This June, our chums at WWF think it's about time you went a little wild. Now, I'm not talking about dancing on your desk at work or blowing your savings on a VW camper. I mean, you can do if you want, but that's not what I mean.

On June 5th, the WWF are asking you to Wear It Wild, to help raise money and awareness for their brilliant and important conservation work. What do they mean by wild? Well, that's up to you.

You can keep it as simple as wearing a pair of leopard-print socks. Maybe a pair of those cat-ears on a headband. Or you could go completely ape and wear a gorilla costume. The choice is yours.

When you sign up for the event at http://www.wwf.org.uk/wild, you'll find action packs and a ton of great fundraising ideas: a sponsored walk, perhaps, or an animal-themed rugby match. I wonder if anyone's told the Springboks?

However you do it, it's easy to go wild in a sustainable way. Have a nose round your cupboards, hit the charity shops. Get out the glue and card, and get creative. And, needless to say, it's fake fur only, please!

All the fun helps WWF with their work, which is more important than ever. In the last forty years we’ve seen wildlife populations decline by more than half. The number of tigers in the wild, to take an especially worrying example, has reduced by 95 percent in the last hundred years. Thousands of other species are also threatened. WWF need your support to show you care.

So, what are you waiting for? With less than a month to go, the time is right for you, your friends, family and workmates to Wear It Wild! Get involved. It's gonna be grrrrrreat.

http://www.wwf.org.uk/wild

The Plastic Age

Archeologists, when exploring a long-gone civilisation, have to work with the artifacts that are left behind. The stuff that, for whatever reason, has lasted. Metal. Glass. Ceramics. Those artifacts tend to allow scientists to group cultures into different ages, based on the most prevalent materials around. The Iron Age. The Bronze Age.

It's commonly thought that when future archeologists look back at us, they will describe the 20th and 21st century as The Plastic Age. In the fifty years since petroleum was first refined into a hard-wearing, long-lasting material, plastics have taken over the world.

And that's a problem. In the most remote areas, in places where humanity has never settled, you can still find plastic. We've all heard of the island of trash floating 1500 miles from land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There's more of it out there with every passing year, in places we always believed to be pristine. The trouble with long-lasting materials is that they last for a very long time. It just doesn't degrade in the way that natural materials do.

This is cause for worry, naturally. But it might not be cause to throw in the towel quite yet. See, as the cost and difficulty in recycling plastics drops, that island of junk in the Pacific stops being an obstacle and starts to look like an opportunity. An untapped resource, ripe for the taking.

Which brings us, finally, to the remit for this blog. Pharrell Williams has teamed up with G-Star Raw to launch a range of jeans made from recycled ocean plastics. To promote the new line, there's a documentary on the whole issue, that's well worth a look.

Now, no-one's claiming that a range of jeans is going to solve the global problem of waste plastic. But the involvement of a big name like Pharrell will make people pay a little more attention to the issue than they would otherwise. And that has to be a good thing.

Take a look at the whole thing, and start thinking about plastic a little differently.

H&M Show Us The Problem At The Heart Of Fast Fashion

Last month, H&M launched its latest Sustainability Index. A positive document, it cheerfully outlined the upwards step change in the brand's use of organic cotton, the way it was lessening environmental impact and its social welfare programmes. It all seems pretty good, and a clear sign of how H&M takes its self-imposed role as the greenest chain on the high street seriously.
But, as Marc Bain of Quartz explains, there's a little more to it than that. The trouble with a global brand like H&M is that it simply can't be sustainable. The problem? The fast fashion model itself.
H&M is a volume business. It makes money by manufacturing vast amounts of clothes and selling them cheaply. For H&M to profit, those clothes have to fly off the shelves. Head of the company Karl-Johan Persson has boasted of the fact that you will see different ranges in his stores from week to week, and he expects to see the racks refreshed daily.
In fact, the clothing giant manufactures over 600 million items a year, across a store footprint that's growing by 10% a year. More clothes means more demand for cotton, which even in its organic form is a thirsty plant that needs lots of water to grow at the volume required. Clothing manufacture requires a lot of water, and in the regions where H&M make their clothes like China and Bangladesh, water access is becoming a big problem.
More clothes means more demand for power and oil. Transportation, one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gases, is a major stumbling block to any company pushing sustainability. Those clothes don't get into the stores worldwide by solar-powered rickshaw.
And then there's issue of what happens to those clothes at the end of their life. H&M are doing their best, working hard on research into cradle-to-cradle models. But currently 0.2% of H&M's clothing contains any sort of recycled material. It's great that they're using more organic cotton. But most of it is still destined for landfill.
It's good to see sustainability reports coming from such a major player--even five years ago this would have seemed unthinkable. It's clear that H&M are working towards being the best that they can be in terms of emissions, in moving away from pesticides, and in worker relations. The trouble is that these are tiny changes in a vast model that is, by dint of its very existence, bad for the planet.

Cross In The Box

I hope it hasn't escaped your attention that there's an election looming in the UK. I'm a sucker for a ballot, and make sure I get to the voting station on time (or frequently a bit early: at the last European elections I was the first man to vote in my ward). It's a big deal for me: the one chance we get every five years to shape our government.
But what does the election mean for ethical fashion and charities? If we wanted to vote based on the remit offered by this here blog, what would we need to know to ensure we put our cross alongside the party that best supported our views?
No party has a policy relating directly to our needs. Most have vague promises to tackle domestic slavery (which could mean any form of sweated labour, although most people read it to mean forced prostitution). It should be noted that there's a cross-party group on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion, looking into issues like the environmental impact of fast fashion, child labour and the like. It should also be noted that this group hasn't convened since June last year.
So, if we don't have anything specific, we can at least zero in on issues that touch on our concerns and, with a eye to the past five years, see what promises have been made and kept.
The coalition of Conservative and Liberal Democrat came to power in 2010 with manifestoes that, underneath the urgent financial measures, contained pledges on climate change and the closer integration of the Third Sector into public welfare: the so-called "Big Society". It quickly became clear, as budget cuts began to bite, what that meant. Welfare was kicked over at the knee, and charities were expected to step in and clear up the mess. The end result: a million people in foodbanks, poverty biting harder than ever, and a gloomy charities sector struggling to cope. After 2012, we heard very little about the Big Society.
Environmental promises also went unkept. David Cameron's claim to head the "greenest government" foundered under the steely gaze of austerity politics, and plans to increase spending on wind farms and home solar initiatives were badly formulated and quietly dropped. As we head into the election, Tory enthusiasm over fracking and the crude oil find at Gatwick shows a government still beholden to the fossil fuel lobby, despite the best efforts of the green-leaning Lib Dems to put environmental issues on the negotiating table. Cameron's call to his policy heads to "get rid of that green crap" say it all.
So where do we look for a party that supports the environment and ethical issues? The obvious answer has to be the Greens, who have major environmental pledges baked into their manifesto. Green MP Caroline Lucas has attended seminars on ethical fashion, and has made it clear that she supports charities like Oxfam. Sounds perfect, right? The problem is, of course, that the Greens, despite the so-called "Green surge" are unlikely to build that momentum into a majority. As it stands, they'll be lucky to hang onto the one seat they do hold.
Environmental and ethical issues are, for the most part second-class citizens in a political debate dominated by the economy and the NHS, although the increased focus on immigration has has the unwanted effect of demonising the low-paid migrant workers who make up so much of the retail, service and medical sectors -- the exact opposite response for those of us who like to believe that dignity in work should be a cherished human right. Should we be downhearted? Is there no-one looking out for ethical fashion and charities in the government?
Well, here's the thing. It's likely that we won't see a majority government this time around, which makes more space for independent voices in government. The ConDemNation may have failed, with an innate failure of two factions to agree on core values. But that doesn't mean we should consider partnership at the highest level to be a bad idea. With the notion of proportional representation re-emerging more strongly than ever, we could be on the brink of a more representative Parliament, one that allows the message of fairly paid work and support for charities to be heard and acted upon.

One last thing. I'd just like to add my voice to the many who are urging you, however apathetic or angry about politics you are, to vote. It's estimated that 15 million people didn't bother in 2010. That's a majority that far overwhelms every other party's vote count. Don't make the assumption that politics has nothing to do with you. The coalition that has spent the last five years failing to deal with the deficit and stripping the NHS down to the bone came to power because not enough people cared to vote for a particular party. That shouldn't happen again. Tomorrow gives us a chance that doesn't come around often enough... to start again. We should not let that chance slip away.

Scoring Slavery

No-one wants to think that their clothes are products of slavery. Regardless of how cheap the item is, if you offered it to customers with a big sticker saying that it was made under sweatshop conditions, it's likely that you'd get very little takeup... and possibly reported to the authorities.
There's a wilful blindness at the heart of fast fashion, an "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" attitude that means consumers have to be clouted repeatedly over the head with the idea that there is a good reason that cheap clothes are so cheap. It's most likely going to be labour costs in the form of fair wages that have been crossed out of the costing analysis.
What we really need is a list of how different fashion brands stack up on this important issue. Maybe even something like a league table. The ability to see at a glance how they compare on this most basic of ethical issues could really enable we the consumers to put pressure on the underperformers.
Australian campaigner Matt Darvas has just released a report that does exactly that. Using a scoring system based on how open different brands are at documenting and implementing fair labour relations, they've come up with a league table that goes from A+ (for brands Etico and Audrey Blue) to a damning F for the PAS group. These scores are for the Australian market, but it gives a fair idea of how the global players are sitting when it comes to fair treatment of their overseas workforce. Here's the list:

Matt is careful to note that having good ethical practices in place is no guarantee that these practices are being adhered to. But at least we're in a position to make a judgement based on more than price or look.
For more, check out Matt's blog post: http://mattdarvas.com/2015/04/23/top-fashion-labels-ranked-on-use-of-slavery/

Last Week Tonight Does Ethical Fashion

We've had a big sign this week that ethical fasion has taken another step into the mainstream. We're not just being talked about in the news. We're being talked about by John Oliver.
For those of you not in the know, John Oliver is the host of Last Week Tonight, a satirical news show with much of the DNA of The Daily Show--a programme that's regularly cited as the most incisive factual programming out there, despite the laughs... or maybe because of them. Oliver got his start on The Daily Show as the comedy Brit. Given his head on Last Week Tonight, he uses equal parts of outsider bafflement and righteous "you just pushed past me in the queue" anger to create items that cut to the bone of the big stories of the day.
Last Night Tonight is credited with turning around the conversation on net neutrality, couching it in terms people actually understood, and forcing an embarrasing climb-down by the FCC on what had been widely percieved to be a done deal. Now Oliver has turned his laser focus on the damaged and damaging world of fast fashion. It's a hell of a ride. I suggest you take a 15 minute break, turn up your speakers, and let this one go.
If you needed one argument for why we need ethical fashion, it's right here.

#WhoMadeMyClothes... and does anyone care?

Happy Fashion Revolution Day! Across the globe, people are turning their clothes inside out, showing off the labels and asking the brands that they wear one simple question... who made my clothes?

Last year's event was an incredible success, with citizens of 55 different countries generating over 6 and a half million hits on Google, a top trend through the day on Twitter and massive coverage in the international press. This year, Fashion Revolution are hoping to build on that success and get more people than ever questioning the opaque supply chain and secretive business practices of many big fashion brands.

The big question, though, is whether this kind of click-to-protest activism makes a lasting impression. The jury is still out. Experts like author Kevin Lewis, who has written extensively about online activism, isn't convinced. He says:

“The victor of our attention meets our base desires. It must be easy to do, interesting, different, and tied to quick and easy outcomes — whether it is taking a picture and posting it online or dumping a bucket of ice on your head.”

In other words, it's a distraction rather than actual activism, a gesture with little meaning. But surely the principal purpose of campaigns like Fashion Revolution Day is to raise awareness. To which Lewis simply says, "define awareness".

Owch. However, this bleak view isn't reflective of general opinion. The trick is to track just what's going on after you click send on that form you came across on Twitter. Carol Cone, global practice chair of business and social purpose for PR giant Edelman, has found that 20% to 30% of respondents to a poll will pass it around social media, while about 10% to 15% will want to get involved at a deeper level. When you have engagement of any kind numbered in the millions, 10% can still make a heck of a difference.

And of course, any campaign with a huge number of signatories is a powerful persuasive tool if it's used correctly. The people involved in Fashion Revolution Day have decades of experience in the fields of fashion and public relations, and understand the clout of a fat petition. FRD has leveraged the attention that last year's event engendered into a set of talking points that have been discussed in the UK Government, and in continuing dialogues with The European Union and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office in Brussels. That's hardly dead air over the issues.

The trick now is to keep that attention and momentum focussed, and get more people than ever talking about the issues and, more importantly, engaging with the brands they wear. There's a lot of influential people in ethical fashion rallying round the Fashion Revolution flag, and thousands of activists. We could be in for a very interesting day. Let's hope the echoes keep booming.

Vote for Space For Cycling!

You might have noticed that there's an election coming up in the UK. In a couple of weeks, there could be a major change in government, in the way business is conducted in this country. For once we have the people who want to be elected to office actively seeking us out to ask for our support. If you have a pet peeve or cause, now's the time to mention it.
Cycling has been in the news more than ever, as more of us get on our bikes and realise that traffic infrastructure is not fit for purpose. Britain's roads, for the most part, were never intended to carry the amount of cars they see on a daily basis. As petrol supplies dwindle and we are encouraged to get out and get active, then the choice seems obvious. We need more space for cycling.
Our friends at the London Cycling Campaign have been working for years to make the roads of the capital safe for cyclists. With a membership of 12,000 they're hardly a minority voice--in fact it's now estimated that more people in London cycle than drive to work. That's a group with enough collective push to persuade the powers-that-be to make the streets of the city safer and more pleasant for those of use on bikes, whether you're pedalling for pleasure or work.
With local elections taking place at the same time as the General Election, this is the ideal time to buttonhole your local councillor or those running for office, and ask them what they are doing for cyclists. After all, they are the ones that could really make a difference to the local road infrastructure.
The LCC has plenty of campaigning tips that don't just apply to London. However, if you are a cyclist in the capital, they are a cause that you really should be supporting. Check out their campaigning tips here, and sign their ongoing petition here.
Remember, elections are the one time when we the people really get the chance to hold the politicians who claim to represent us to account. Make sure your voice is heard, and take a few minutes to get Space For Cycling onto the agenda in May.