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Is This Sheep Local?


There is this episode of Portlandia, it might even be the first one. Fred and Carrie are at a restaurant and they are questioning the waiter about the chicken on the menu: Is it local? They also inquire about the chicken’s living conditions. The waiter tells them the chicken had four acres to roam. In addition, the chicken had a diet of hazelnuts, sheep’s milk, and soy. 

Fred asks if the hazelnuts are local.

The waiter comes back with the chicken’s “papers” to share. Apparently “Colin” was from a farm 30 miles away. Fred and Carrie feel more comfortable if they can go check out the farm themselves before they commit to eating it. They come back in 6 months after a thorough investigation.

It’s brilliant. 

I would love for this to happen with clothing. That people turn their full attention so much to where and how their clothing is made that it becomes fodder for comedy. That we can poke fun of our inquiring selves because we know that we are not going to go back to a place where we just don’t care. 

Maybe in my lifetime? Yes. You heard it here first.

“Sustainable” is the new “Organic” (it can be!)

This may seem impossible, but don’t you remember the early days of food regulation? Back in the 1980s you could call something healthy that was made of lard and hotdogs. Sure there were enough rules to say that your lard hotdog would not kill you right away. This is where we are now with clothing. There are some national laws, like labeling requirements, and flammability and hazardous materials standards (and some states have more regulations, notably California). But bare bones legislation does not tell you enough information to make an informed decision about the impact of clothing manufacturing on the environment or garment workers.

We needed national organic food standards because food producers did not regulate themselves (why would they?). Regulation only happened when congress passed the Organic Food Production Act of 1990. Clothing and textiles need a similar law. We need a law that defines the ubiquitous word “sustainable”. We need standards so we can make informed choices about what we buy, and be able to rely with some assurance that a manufacturer indeed met some kind of threshold with their environmental claims. 

So I can meet the sheep who shed my wool and the weaver who spun it and the craftswoman who made it who was making a living wage in conditions that are not threatening so a garment can be marketed with confidence that it won’t hasten the death of the planet.

And what if humor is the way to mainstream the issues we care about? We should try it.

Not for nothing it can’t hurt. 




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