I wrote a letter and they wrote me back! The same day!

I was just reading to my six year old this evening Ramona's World, The adult letter.  In the story, Ramona and he friend write a letter to a salesman who misuses the English language in an advertisement.  they get a letter back and they are so excited about this prospect!  Well this happened to me today!  I wrote Ibex asking them about their wool and how they claim to be sustainable, and they wrote right back.  Their letter still left me with unnswered questions about where their sheep grow and where their factories are...but I wrote him back (see the bottom) and asked these questions.  It is exciting to look into this, and to have a response from a company who actually seems to take some serious consideration to the sustainable and ecological and socially responsible development of clothes is refreshing.  It helps me on my quest to buy only clothes that are sustainably grown...which will be tough...not sure i can swing it.

Anneliese,

Thank you for your email.

Ibex takes a great deal of pride in our selection process of which farms we will work with. No sheep has ever been slaughtered for meat after the shearing process, we use the same farms with the same sheep year after year.  Ibex currently has 70% of our products that are Zque certified. Zque fibre combines natural performance wool with an accreditation program that ensures environmental, social and economic sustainability, animal welfare (non-mulesed) and traceability back to the source. I have attached a link to the Z’Que web site for your review so you can see the high standards that all farms are held to before Ibex will consider using their wool. www.dicoverzque.com

As for dying our fabrics, our wool is minimally processed when it comes to chemicals. The greasy wool (sheared from the farm) is put through baths that clean mostly with water and may use a little soap.  The wool is combed to get the debris out. If it is a washable fabric we use the Hercoset process to gently remove a minimal amount of the barbs so the fabric will not felt together which makes the fabric shrink. The Hercoset process uses chlorine and resin.  It is a closed loop process concerning the environment.  This happens at the cleaning step. At the spinning, the wool is further combed and cleaned and then spun into yarn. If it is a felted or milled fabric it basically is just washed using soap and water before and after it is dyed. All they dyes we use are the best environmentally, they do not contain heavy metals. The washing/final finish uses basic soap and water. At the end of the fabric process all the fabrics are tested to make sure they are PH balanced.

Please let us know if you have any further questions about Ibex or the practices we use with our wool. Thanks and have a great day!

Tim Barrett

Customer Service Representative

Ibex Outdoor Clothing

132 Ballardvale Drive

White River Junction, VT 05001

800-773-9647

tbarrett@ibex.com

HI there, thank you for your quick response.  I am curious where the sheep live that you purchase your wool from?  In the US?  Also, I was wondering where your factories are that put the clothes together?  Are those in Vermont?

Thanks again, your input is extremely helpful and I was very pleased to see such a detailed response. I will look at the links you sent me and look at all the information more in depth, I was just wondering those questions as I read on.

Thanks,

Anneliese

continuing my research on sustainable clothes.

For my action, I have decided to try and commit to only buying clothes from companies that try to use sustainable practices.
Patagonia is close but I question how sustainable they are, see last post.
Ibex is the company I am researching now.  My first step of this action plan is to find companies I can buy from.  Therefore I emailed IBEX and asked them:

"HI I noticed you mentioned on your website your clothing is sustainable.  I was wondering where the clothing is made and to what ends do you research your factories ecological and social responsibilities? 

I am an avid Ibex fan and looking to commit to shopping only from truly sustainable companies.  Can you please explain how you view your company as sustainable?

Thank you."

I hope they respond to me as soon as possible so I can begin to understand this.  
I really believe that companies need to EXPLAIN what they mean when they claim they are sustainable or green.  While I am sad that the organic label has been dumbed down by the USDA, at least there is some legal claim to the term organic in the marketplace.  There does not seem to be any regs on "energy efficient" or "natural" or "sustainable" etc...It is frustrating to try and be an educated consumer when there is a constant VEIL keeping the public from truth.

my new topic of exploration: WHO MAKES OUR CLOTHES?

It all began, (again, I might add, I go through this process every several years) with one of those emails i got from democracy now! http://m.democracynow.org/stories/13948

"Journalists Find 12-Year-Old Girls Making Old Navy Jeans for Gap in Bangladeshi Factory"

about an Al Jazeera journalist who started digging into a factory that makes clothes in Bangladesh who employ children, and turned out they  make clothes for old navy.
Now, I know old navy is flimsy clothes that is cheap, so it has to be made in a company that is NOT ecologically or socially responsible.  Gap, prettymuch the same. BUT the same company, I know, wons Banana Republic and Athleta.  I consider Athleta to be super nice.  actually truth be told their stuff is also a tad flimsy, but their style of not to be beat  (in my mind).
This concerned me and made me start wondering, who is making my clothes and can you get away from buying clothes made in sweatshops?

The questions came up in a facebook about Patagonia, who claims big ecological and social concern. They evem have a webpage dedicated to answering these very questions.  While I see this as noble, I also question whether they are ethical either?

They also make their products all over the world, where wages are low and ecological laws are lean.  Regardless of how you dice it, they are choosing to make their product elsewhere other than the us...and they claim the garment industry is dead in the us due to lower costs, but really, if you are going to part of the solution, then you ought to also start the change, make your garments in the us and take a cut in product.http://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?assetid=67517  While I question their reality, I do think they are super transparent, and this should be commended. They even make their factory list public.
Then someone added a list of sweat shops to my facebook page:http://www.ehow.com/info_7737064_lists-brands-use-sweatshops.html
and most devastating in this list: LL BEAN!
Yes, according to "ehow" LL bean, the very company which touts the healthy outdoorsy New England kid with their golden retriever puppy exploits young children in their factories according to this website "L.L. Bean, Gymborree, Hanes use forced child labor in their Uzbekistan cotton production plants."  Gymboree!!! crazy land, clothes for kids!
I do not view ehow as some ecological website so I thought their findings were interesting, but I am not sure what it is based on.
My search went on...

Fall 2013

Welcome to the blog portion of this course!
This semester EDU 100 will be slightly different from past EDU 100 sections, since it is part of this environmental education, sustainability freshman learning community.
While our focus is still education, there is a thread of sustainability throughout.
While you peruse past semester student blogs (on the right blog link lists) you will see many blogs mainly focused on education and education hot topics.
This fall semester you will be creating a blog with A GROUP focused on a hot topic in the environment.
There are many hot topics in this area right now:

1.  FUKUSHIMA nuclear power plant and how they just fished up blue fin tuna on the coast of california that are radioactive due to the Fukushima plant meltdown due to the Tsunami.
http://samuel-warde.com/2013/08/radioactive-bluefin-tuna-caught-off-california-coast/
http://www.thenation.com/article/175799/fukushimas-invisible-crisis#axzz2d5YwpQvk
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-australia-uranium-idUSBRE97K09R20130821
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/08/22/fukushima-japan-radioactive-leak.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2013/08/21/fukushima-watch-a-level-3-incident-at-daiichi/
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130822/New-focus-on-long-term-effects-of-Fukushima-Daiichi-nuclear-disaster.aspx  But is it only in Japan?
http://grist.org/climate-energy/ask-umbra-what-can-fukushima-teach-us/
This topic is interesting from many perspectives. 1) nuclear power, 2)  what does media do to cover up or illuminate news?  3)  this issue specifically and how far has this radioactivity spread into our own food chain, particularly DAIRY.

2. FOOD INDUSTRIALIZATION: GMO'S are an issue onto their own, etc...Organics...see other blog with many links:http://edu309.blogspot.com/
3.  Oil: fracking
4. Oil: Tar Sands and Keystone Pipeline?
5.  Oil and our involvement in the middle east wars

6. BEES?  and the neonic pesticides and our own roll in this...what is going to happen?


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2149141,00.html

This is what your supermarket would look like if all the bees died off

6. global Warming:  is global warming increasing world violence?

http://grist.org/news/climate-scientists-are-95-percent-sure-that-humans-are-causing-global-warming/

7> Environmental justice: http://www.ejfoundation.org/?gclid=CJCQwtXInLkCFYik4AodRykAYQ  many issues there to peruse...global justice issues.

AND THE GRIST http://grist.org/news/ HAS TONS OF ARTICLES TO PERUSE TO SEE WHAT IS OF INTEREST TO YOU.

i.e.

electric cars?  prius etc, is it worth it?

Where does our garbage go?

What towns are banning plastic bags and what does this mean?

AlsoL check out this link by David Suzuki to get some ideas of other issues, if you click on some of the other links he refers to: http://davidsuzuki.org/blogs/healthy-oceans-blog/2013/08/seven-things-you-can-do-every-day-to-protect-our-oceans/

Summer 2013

Welcome to summer 2013...Here is my blog, which mainly houses old student blogs and will house yours too!
I have this summer included images for thoughts about young children and education and the teaching career

 Last year Chicago teachers striked..

school buses, field trips!

 hands on learning?

 The Earth Wisdom Teachings

The first people had questions, and they were free. The second people had answers, and they became enslaved.

Voltaire

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

fall 2012

HI everyone who is registered in this course for Fall 2012!
Welcome to the BLOG portion of the course.
We do this to provide you with a new venue to share ideas.
You might find that blogs will be helpful in the future for when you have your classroom.
You can be creative...
You can explore topics.
You can share ideas.
TO CRITICALLY THINK about education and all the issues surrounding teaching.
You can go above and beyond with this.
I have found in the evals over the years that in the end people say they were not into the blog at first, and then it turned out to be one of their favorite aspects of the course.
Being savvy in some of the tech stuff involved with blogging is important in education, and it is an easy way to start.

A STORY ABOUT NOT CRITICAL THINKING:
Last week I had to commute into work. Along the way there is a toll.  The cars were backed up miles and miles before the toll, and I saw a sign that said "left side go to EZ PASS and right side CASH...The right side was moving along swiftly, while the left side was backed up.  I have an easy pass, but I know that cash lines let you go through with an ez pass, so I cruised passed hundreds and hundreds of commuters, went through the cash line effortlessly and went to work.  All those people saw the sign that said EZ PASS and like cattle, stayed in that line.  It makes me wonder about why people cannot think, or do not think.

As teachers, our role is to get people to think, to ask questions, to put one and one together and make a decision for themselves.

In an election year, it is an important time to critically think.  One thing that seems critical is the ability to assess what these politicians are saying. luckily, in the day and age of web and internet, there are FACT CHECKERS.  These have been invaluable as I listen to the rhetoric that is getting people all crazy.  Be a thinker, quection...and education is heavily on the line in this election, so pay attention!  Find out who is for education, TRULY... Use this blog to explore these issues when the topic is open.
http://www.factcheck.org/  (a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.)

so enjoy!  You will see the blog assignments as we move through the learning modules.
YOu will create your first one in LM 2 due Sept 25.

I personally blog a lot.
I blog about my family mainly.
I also blog as a reflective practice for my own teaching.

summer 2012

HI everyone!  Welcome to Summer 2012.  Hope everyone gets some summer fun while also studying edu 100 info!  The link list for our class' blogs are to the right under 2012...