00:00:38.520Before we begin today's episode, I'd like to share an exciting project the For the Wild team has been tending for the past few years.
00:00:45.880Some of you may remember an episode called The Day the Water Died, back in 2018 with Dune Lankard, a tribal elder of the Eyak Eagle clan and a lifelong conservationist.
00:01:13.580Right now, we face a pivotal moment in Dune's 20-year struggle to preserve 11,000 acres
00:01:19.540of the Bering River coalfield, which remains extremely vulnerable to mountaintop strip
00:01:24.760mining under its current private ownership.
00:01:27.680Dune and his organization, Native Conservancy, have a short window of time to purchase the coal title and to halt resource extraction.
00:01:35.980We are putting out the call for large donors, organizations, foundations, or those who may be connected to such funders to be in touch with us, to partner in protecting the Copper River Delta.
00:01:48.480This is big. This could mean the permanent protection of 3 million acres downstream of one of the wildest places left on the earth.
00:01:57.820The enduring subsistence of the Eak people and their salmon, eagle, bear, and all the other more than human kin depend on it.
00:02:06.220There is a powerful shift afoot in the land back movement, and we are here for it.
00:02:10.740Get in touch at engage at forthewild.world and visit nativeconservancy.org.
00:02:27.040hello and welcome to for the wild i'm ayanna young today i'm speaking with rebecca burgess
00:02:44.500rebecca is the executive director of fiber shed and chair of the board for carbon cycle institute
00:02:50.660she has over a decade of experience writing and implementing hands-on curriculum that focuses on
00:02:56.920the intersection of restoration ecology and fiber systems. I think it's always been technology,
00:03:03.620trade agreements, exploitation of labor and land that have continued to grease the wheels for rapid
00:03:10.060consumption. Rebecca has taught at Westminster College, Harvard University, and has created
00:03:17.280workshops for a range of NGOs and corporations. She is the author of the best-selling book,
00:03:22.900Harvesting Color, a bioregional look into the natural dye traditions of North America,
00:03:28.640and Fibershed, growing a movement of farmers, fashion activists, and makers for a new textile
00:03:34.400economy released in 2019. She has built an extensive network of farmers and artisans
00:03:40.200within our region's Northern California Fibershed to pilot the regenerative fiber systems models
00:03:46.000at the community scale. Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. Our rooster cutie is
00:03:54.620especially excited to have you on the show today. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to diving
00:04:01.320into this topic, which we've never discussed on the podcast before, like I was mentioning earlier.
00:04:05.940And I think there's so much good juiciness in this topic that will really shock us and also
00:04:13.700give us a way forward that feels an integrity. Oh, thank you. And I love that your rooster's
00:04:21.440name is Cutie. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here. And it's exciting
00:04:28.320to be able to discuss this topic with you. I'm a longtime fan of the podcast and have always
00:04:35.360been an avid learner and just so grateful to receive so much from the guests you've had on
00:04:42.500the show and the way you facilitated the conversation so this is exciting thank you
00:04:48.280thank you well i feel i feel the same way about all the guests including yourself so i i feel
00:04:55.340very lucky and um cutie or sometimes we call him bach bach he's uh he'll yeah he'll be joining us
00:05:02.360for a little bit until he finds himself his little um happy happy uh nest out there but0.95
00:05:10.520yeah, I'd like to start in the belly of the behemoth that is industrialized fashion.
00:05:16.820Now, the global fashion industry is responsible for 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Today,
00:05:23.02060% of all clothing produced is disposed of within the same year it was purchased.
00:05:29.180And we're purchasing over 50% more than we did even 15 years ago, which is to say that it wasn't
00:05:35.920always like this. So I'd love if you could start off by sharing when our society really started to
00:05:42.300rampantly consume clothes, and how has the fashion sector been shaped culturally and
00:05:47.660economically over the past couple of decades? Oh, that's a great question. It's interesting
00:05:54.140to try to pinpoint one set of inflection points in our history that would have said,
00:06:02.700you know that i could say this is the point at which the consumption really changed i could name
00:06:06.680a few points that i think have been in have led to the quote-unquote progress of this problem
00:06:12.800one is you know the the actual beginnings of the industrial revolution and the the cotton gins
00:06:20.640um the eli whitney invented cotton gin which amplified the ability for people to
00:06:27.060grow more cotton because it could be de-seeded very quickly. So that also amplified the slave
00:06:34.440trade in the southeastern part of the United States, but it generally just created a lot more
00:06:39.240raw material that could be processed in the northeast, also in Manchester, England. They
00:06:45.780were processing a lot of Indian cotton. I think all the technologies on farm really started to
00:06:52.740change the industrial nature agriculture related to fiber and so with all this raw material with
00:07:03.140these um you know prices started to um come down and industry just started to basically take over
00:07:12.600on the ag and the value addition side so there's that that's you know basically from the mid 1800s
00:07:20.800forward. And then I think about fast forward to the trade deals. So you have the North American
00:07:28.320Free Trade Agreement in 1994. And, you know, like, here's one example, 1960, they say about
00:07:36.08098% of our clothes were made in the United States. Maybe 2% were from overseas. And now
00:07:43.440today, as we sit here and talk, that number is completely reversed. And in fact, less than 1%
00:07:48.260of our clothes are actually grown woven and sewn in the United States and you know 99 point
00:07:55.180something percent is imported and the way that that occurred that import economy was through
00:08:00.800trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA and then CAFTA the Central American
00:08:05.760Free Trade Agreement and then as clothing could be produced in the late 90s south of the border
00:08:14.560overseas Pakistan India China Vietnam Myanmar these low-wage countries that had fewer they
00:08:24.860just didn't anticipate the kind of aggression of the industrial system and so the environmental
00:08:30.860laws were not prepared the labor laws were not prepared you were moving people in these other
00:08:36.400countries out of subsistence village style textile production and moving them into industry0.79
00:08:41.780and factory jobs and low wages and so the fight has become I think to like to really see that like
00:08:51.360a lot of the environmental and social issues are overseas now that we need to contend with there's
00:08:57.240many still issues in the U.S. textile industry but so much of what we wear is overseas and we
00:09:02.680were able to under these lax labor and environmental laws we were able to amplify production rates and
00:09:09.460And again, just like the spinning jenny and the cotton gin and the mechanical looms brought more fiber through and prices down, then the trade deals, again, we were able to move these technologies into low-cost labor environmental standard countries.
00:09:29.000and then that again ramped up production rates because people could consume more at lower costs
00:09:35.600because the true cost was never being paid for and then fast forward a little bit more we our
00:09:43.520consumption rates went up prices went down 2000s the early 2000s you saw the advent of
00:09:50.040international brands in other countries actually like h&m out of sweden h&m is their class fashion
00:09:57.580brand. And as they came on the scene, they pioneered these very quick turnover times where
00:10:04.980you could design something and you could get it to the racks very quickly. And the idea of four
00:10:10.800seasons turned into seasons every few weeks. So that was Zara as another fast fashion brand that
00:10:16.760really pioneered that. But as we saw those companies, one was in Sweden, one in Spain,
00:10:23.140start pioneering this idea of fast fashion like literally even called that it um that's when you
00:10:30.720see the numbers just go through the roof on consumption and those numbers you just uh brought
00:10:35.360forward you know that we're we're consuming this much the 60 percent of the clothes are
00:10:40.280not even utilized over a year um of wear time those rates started to happen in the 2000s
00:10:48.300and so now we're here still consuming it projected to increase consumption by greater and greater
00:10:57.280rates globally actually there's no slowing down of the industry predicted outside of COVID-19
00:11:04.560which has been an amazingly big swing of change but yes I think it's always been technology
00:11:13.880trade agreements exploitation of labor and land that have continued to grease the wheels for
00:11:20.380rapid consumption so here we are gosh just hearing that response it's really what a predicament
00:11:33.560we've gotten ourselves into and yeah the the statistics are just crazy that that the fashion
00:11:40.620industry creates more CO2 than maritime shipping and international flights combined. I was reading
00:11:49.740that until factories started to feel the effects of COVID-19, the global fashion business was
00:11:54.480producing 150 billion items of clothing each year, which far exceeds our needs, even for a population
00:12:02.640of 7.9 billion. So yeah, it's really, it's really crazy. And there's just so many facets of the
00:12:10.760fashion system worthy of exploration. But as someone who is incredibly experienced with natural
00:12:16.600dye and bioregional textile culture, I'd really like to focus on the textile system and the
00:12:22.640chemicals that are so pervasive in their creation. Again, in preparation, I was reading that 25% of
00:12:29.080chemicals produced worldwide are solely used for textile manufacturing. And accordingly,
00:12:35.20020% of global industrial water pollution is caused by the textile process. So as a precursor
00:12:42.520to discussing Fibershed's work, I'm curious to learn more about the toxicity of the textile
00:12:47.720process as well as the pervasiveness of synthetic dyes. What are the ramifications of synthetic
00:12:54.260dyes in our clothing production and where in the cycle does pollution begin and where does it
00:12:59.060end? That's a great question. Well, on the dye piece, the pollution begins at the extraction
00:13:05.740of fossil carbon from the lithosphere. So synthetic dyes originated from William Perkins
00:13:12.980in 1856 when he was trying to find a cure for malaria. There was an explosion in his laboratory
00:13:19.540and the coal tar concoction that he had created blew this color that became mauve
00:13:27.980all over the walls of the lab and you know fast forward it was like 400 pounds of coal tar
00:13:35.020was needed to make one ounce of blue dye when they got to the creation of blue but so what you see
00:13:42.640around the time we started extracting coal and other forms of fossil carbon to power the industrial
00:13:49.080civilization that we are now living in the material culture that came from lithosphere-based carbon
00:13:56.460And in large part, it was, you know, it was dye, this color no longer had to come from
00:14:01.340leaves and roots, you know, which did that, you know, plant-based colors that proceeded
00:28:06.180It's fascinating in a really disturbing way to hear this.
00:28:13.920And I want to talk more about the greenwashed fashion industry a little bit later, but just to respond to the deforestation of eucalyptus trees for quote unquote green, sustainable fabric material.
00:28:31.920I see this all the time on websites that are marketing towards people who care about the
00:28:39.600earth, big fashion brands online, you know, oh, look at our new green fashion, you know,
00:28:47.560this fabric doesn't use as much water, you know, all this touting of why this eucalyptus
00:28:54.000pulp, for instance, is better than cotton.
00:28:56.420and I think, oh my gosh, we are deforesting land halfway across the world so that we can say that
00:29:05.460it's green. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's a horrible, horrible marketing scam. And I'm so0.94
00:29:10.440happy you brought that up. And to know that even old growth eucalyptus forests are being cut down
00:29:15.420for our fast fashion dresses or sheets, it's really insane. And it makes me so sick to see
00:29:25.100these false solutions marketed to people who are trying to do good, but really it's just another
00:29:32.000form of exploitation and degradation and community displacement. And it just, it really frustrates me.
00:29:42.200But yeah, I do want to talk about this a little bit later, go into the so-called green fashion
00:29:48.440industry in a minute, but I'd like to transition to discussing what your organization Fibershed
00:29:54.000does specifically to create regional textile communities, especially when it comes to the
00:29:59.820simultaneous strengthening of regional economies and carbon farming. So I'd love if you could share
00:30:05.280a little bit about Fibershed's history and how a different kind of fashion can aid in sustaining a
00:30:10.680place. Why is it vital that we begin to look at working landscapes as spaces to coalesce
00:30:17.080multiple local systems like agriculture and fashion good question um so the the idea of
00:30:25.840focusing on a locality um or a place to me has been central to like you know for me to answer
00:30:35.200questions about the global system i always feel like um like i'll just put out there like a lot
00:30:41.740of the data that i was able to collect for the book for instance um i've talked to some journalists
00:30:46.660about this, it was very, you're working with very high level data that isn't always very well
00:30:52.640ground truth. And, you know, we don't really know all the details of what's going on in these birch
00:30:58.820tree farms in Sweden, where they use, you know, tree pulp for H&M's line, we don't really know
00:31:04.240all these eucalyptus tree farms in Brazil that are being used for other supply chains for tree
00:31:10.160pulp fiber, I would say in general, I always feel a little overwhelmed by the scale. And I think
00:31:16.720you and I both in this conversation have kind of sighed, trying to even like contemplate the
00:31:22.940complexity of this and the impact of it. It's very hard to even wrap one's head around. And
00:31:30.400I think the way our society is designed right now, we don't have enough third parties. Our
00:31:37.440governments are very responsive to business as usual. Business as usual does not want to tell
00:31:42.760you a true story about itself. It wants to tell you a very wash story about itself. And I think
00:31:49.020just the very structure of our industrial civilization makes it very hard to really
00:31:53.320get down to the nitty gritty. And so I always feel a little overwhelmed trying to be a critic
00:31:57.420of the big system. Even though I am a critic, I always feel a little bit like, I know I'm missing
00:32:01.980a few beats here because no one's actually collecting true data. Like we don't have
00:32:06.880governments that are truly responsible collecting data to know the impact of our material culture
00:32:11.940but what I do know is when I focus on a place I can start to really understand my impact if I
00:32:18.960focus on a home geography that I understand where these fibers are coming from I can measure the
00:32:26.480carbon in the soil myself with the help of a lab I can help my fellow farming community
00:32:35.360look at different practices that would enhance biodiversity on these lands I can be standing in
00:32:41.460those fields I can be breathing that air with the farmer or rancher that I'm working with I can
00:32:47.420talk them through their vision for the future I can hold we can hold each other's hand as we work
00:32:54.440through developing a textile from farm to skin together and I just don't I don't know maybe it's
00:33:00.140just how my neurology works, but I feel like if I'm not connected to a process, I can't truly
00:33:07.300tell you what the impacts really are of that process. So much gets lost at this big gargantuan
00:33:12.860scale. And I think to bring things home is where we can truly start to be responsive and able,
00:33:19.800thus responsible to a system. And that's why Fibershed as an org has focused on place-based
00:33:25.880strategic geographies where we can build textile growing processing and wearing hubs
00:33:34.180and our northern california fiber shed is 51 counties which go from the pacific ocean to the
00:33:40.800foothills the oregon border down to san luis obispo and we have we work with about 44 i want
00:33:49.220to say to 50 affiliate communities who are also defining their home place and what they want to
00:33:57.940see grown that work that grows well in their community and they want to be able to track
00:34:02.660soil organic carbon they want to track and pay attention to biological diversity they're
00:34:08.560interested in the intersection of wild landscapes and agriculture and how to synthesize those
00:34:13.520harmoniously. All these decisions we make about a place, I feel like have to be made by the people
00:34:19.340who live there. And I think defining a responsible textile culture, I just don't know if it can be
00:34:25.360done outside of a place. You know, I feel like every time I get to, if I go to a ranch where
00:34:32.480they're, you know, producing some very beautiful Rambouillet wool or Perrindale, you know, I end
00:34:40.840up realizing each ranch is an ecosystem each ranch has specific relationships with water air
00:34:47.340biological diversity and each each person stewarding that land has a different approach
00:34:54.320and so really doing things at the community level allows you to understand things more deeply
00:35:00.620and understand your impact in a more resonant way with that which i which i would say is a true way
00:35:07.220you really start to not that we can ever know all of our impact ecologically our sense organs
00:35:13.220don't really allow us to understand it all but I feel like our message is really try to come home
00:35:20.000try to think about how you can make your material culture responsible to your place how can you make
00:35:26.740it there how can you provide right livelihoods in your community and you know this is not a new
00:35:32.700idea this is a very very old idea and it's worked for a very long time and it's how we had beautiful
00:35:40.300endemic textile cultures across the world and i i was very inspired by the idea of a fiber shed from
00:35:47.360the indonesian archipelago where we had every island you know east timor pejong bali i just
00:35:56.760reflect on the fact that each each village with you know there could be many on an island would
00:36:02.500each have like a different set of patterns that they would weave a different set of dye recipes
00:36:07.900that they'd pioneered and it was such a beautiful and responsive way to be with the ecology
00:36:14.820that when I came home from Indonesia I thought you know this you know western colonized land
00:36:22.380that I live on and my ancestors were part of definitely the problem here how can I heal my
00:36:29.500own relationship to place and so fiber sheds really kind of like a personal journey to be
00:36:35.720more responsive and kind to myself in the landscape that you know is a colonized landscape
00:36:42.740and try to think about the best possible ways of interacting with that landscape
00:36:47.300so i'm not putting the impacts of my material culture on other communities internationally
00:36:53.540how do i take all of what i need to do to create my life well and do it here and it's actually
00:37:00.060very possible it's funny people are always like how how can you yeah how could you actually grow
00:37:06.000and weave and wear all clothes within this geography and the irony is we have so much
00:37:12.400more fiber than we even have uses for it. So we're actually growing in our fiber shed
00:37:19.940millions and millions of pounds of fiber that go completely underutilized.
00:37:27.320So that's the trick. We actually can do this and we can do it together. And we're starting to make
00:37:36.040that happen. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love hearing that we can do this. It's possible. It's not some
00:37:43.840far-fetched fantasy or some look back in our history thinking, oh, well, that was then,
00:37:51.160but we can't do that now. It's like we can and we have to if we want to be in right relationship
00:37:56.800with the earth. And yeah, I'm really excited to hear that. And there was this book that you had
00:38:04.920recommended EarthLogic fashion action research plan by Kate Fletcher and Matilda Tham, and in it
00:38:13.220they write, quote, when I think back to before, I see that now I am so much better dressed. I am
00:38:18.920more a part of where I live. Yes, this is a bit down to the fact that I am now wearing things
00:38:23.700suited to the weather here that were designed with this place in mind, but also because I am
00:38:29.040contributing to life in this place people around here have jobs because of my wardrobe choices
00:38:35.320we all want clean rivers flowing through our community so no one is dumping chemicals
00:38:39.620we all know that the hidden system that make the visible fashion system run care practices
00:38:45.420handing down of clothes haberdasheries laundrettes is cultivated and cherished by what we choose to
00:38:52.380do each day when we get dressed end quote and i like that because it also is speaking to this
00:38:58.460idea of place. And I agree that trying to think about the global scale is so big, but if we're
00:39:04.960actually looking at the land, the land speaks and the place can help focus us. And I think that as
00:39:12.500many places are contaminated and poisoned, it's clear that we need to dedicate our livelihoods
00:39:18.500to care practices. So I'm wondering how does the re-emergence of local economies and cottage
00:39:23.800industry ensure healthy environments? That's such a good question about the insurance policy
00:39:30.760of doing things locally to protect all of Earth's biomes. It's really something I think
00:39:38.920about a lot. And regional textile manufacturing is something that I find fascinating. There used
00:39:45.600to be 12 wool mills in california that were vertically integrated they would you know harvest
00:39:53.660wool during the spring season and produce all kinds of basic functional things that people
00:40:01.260needed even in our state of california which people don't think of as a textile production
00:40:05.420state and it was only when the trans-pacific railway came in in 1892 when we could import
00:40:15.140into California textiles from the Southeast that were really running off of the backs of
00:40:21.940a post-Civil War economy, which was still incredibly, incredibly powered by people who
00:40:27.680were still basically somewhat enslaved. And so costs of textiles from the Southeast
00:40:33.060were too cheap for California mills to compete with. And like all 12 mills closed immediately,
00:40:40.820like by 1893 after that railway line came in and so you know the system has always been doing that
00:40:47.340it's always been looking for who and what can we exploit faster and when you put it you're if you
00:40:53.300focus on a place and an economy of that's in your community it's you're just not going to get very
00:41:00.500far if you go out and you just say I'm going to just exploit everybody I'm going to I'm going to
00:41:05.080exploit the water that I drink. I'm, you know, you basically can't, you know, pooping in your
00:41:11.080own immediate nest is a very bad idea. And pooping on earth's nest and trying to live in it is what
00:41:16.600we've, as humanity, we have been doing very poorly. But in your immediate community, you see
00:41:21.640the impact of your actions so much more quickly, whether they're how you're relating to other
00:41:25.900people, how to maintain relationships over decades, how to have families working together
00:41:32.500over multiple generations in a tight community these are the kinds of questions that get
00:41:39.120answered you really figure out your way about how to build an economy through relating properly to
00:41:43.840others and integrity with others in integrity with all beings basically you get actually get
00:41:50.660kind of forced to I mean it's actually a great crucible of learning to focus on a regional economy
00:41:56.260and we've started to do that in northern california there's actually a very a very nice
00:42:02.360emerging spinning mill in ukiah mendocino that was actually funded by a series of what we call
00:42:10.740direct public offerings the idea was funding main street not wall street and so a lot of us got
00:42:16.580involved and put money in and propped up this very beautiful small mill that this family of six
00:42:24.780operates and the oldest daughter is a natural dyer and they spin they comb and they wash wool
00:42:31.800all under their roof and they live on the same land the mill exists that's the mendocino wool
00:42:37.280and fiber mill there's another small mill that we really want to see it grow to the valley oak
00:42:44.300wool mill in winters california and then there's the houston family weaving mill in rancho cordova
00:42:51.620California we're starting to see this next generation of millers they're all under the age
00:42:57.340of 35 and they're all starting these new I call it the new blue collar basically working with your
00:43:04.520hands to create essential goods for your community that's such an important offering and when you
00:43:12.580yeah when you think about how to make material culture in your community you start to create
00:43:17.680all these diverse livelihoods you know no longer is everyone just sitting at their computer
00:43:22.100talking to each other you know you're out in the world making things growing things exchanging
00:43:27.700things bartering collaborating to make a new thing and to me um that has built relationships that
00:43:35.460I just they're not they're irreplaceable and they're priceless and I don't think there's
00:43:40.980anything like working together to make a sweater that brings people together more like in my
00:43:47.800experience it's like okay i'm gonna do the spinning you're gonna do the dying so-and-so
00:43:53.340is gonna help market it so-and-so is gonna help us get it on this website the other person's gonna
00:43:58.660raise the sheep i know so-and-so is gonna shear the sheep you have you start to get to know
00:44:03.900everybody and they're your friends and they're and your colleagues they're not like a supply chain
00:44:08.880you know yes it's a supply chain but it's really a community experience as our little mills grow
00:44:15.200because they do want to grow they want to grow in their capacity not to become monoliths but to
00:44:21.020definitely become an ecosystem of businesses that work collaboratively together with farmers and
00:44:26.400ranchers and add value to farmed and ranch material so we can all wear it you know as we
00:44:31.880build a little bit of capacity the prices start to come down because we use just enough of our
00:44:37.640appropriate technologies to make our textiles locally so i i think of um the idea of yeah just
00:44:46.200focused on how can we build this here as something that fiber shed has spent well since 2014 we've
00:44:55.580been building the engineering specs the financial analysis connecting capital resources to
00:45:02.200entrepreneurs, building coordinated sets of relationships between people who grow and people
00:45:08.660who make, storytelling to make sure the community knows about each other, making sure we're telling
00:45:14.480each other stories well, which is what you do so well here on this podcast. So I think together,
00:45:21.420everyone in a local economy also just seems to find their place. And I always say that when
00:45:27.140I first started the project, some people felt a little competitive with each other. I recognize
00:45:32.880that maybe amongst some of the farmers or some of the makers. And I just kept reminding myself
00:45:38.900if those feelings ever came up, that we each have literally a fingerprint. We're here to offer
00:45:45.820something very unique to our community. And if we all just kind of remind ourselves that our
00:45:50.900offering is distinct discreet but mutually supportive of other people's offerings
00:45:56.880then we can situate ourselves and center ourselves in a sense of comfort that by being truly
00:46:04.240ourselves we are offering what we need to to our community and that's what regional economies also
00:46:10.420teach you if everyone just does what they love it works out and i've seen it over and over and over
00:46:16.760again. It's a beautiful thing to watch. I feel eternally grateful for dedicating a lot of my
00:46:24.660life to regional economic development. Well, I think part of the systemic oppression is to pit
00:46:32.080people against each other, to pit local people against each other, to make folks feel like
00:46:38.260they're in competition rather than in cooperation um and and then i think it that that type of
00:46:47.980mentality disenchants us or makes us feel like it's not possible to actually do things like
00:46:54.940local economic um support so yeah i definitely see that and i'm happy you spoke to that
00:47:01.660now i'd like to get back to the green washing of fashion and over the past couple of decades
00:47:09.560the ecological impacts of industrialization and globalization have become glaringly clear
00:47:15.380certainly in the past decade the fashion industry has been confronted by its own impacts
00:47:20.320yet we've not seen any sort of scaling down only new implementations of so-called techno fixes and
00:47:27.660green solutions in order to maintain profit. And I'm thinking about the burgeoning sector
00:47:33.420of the so-called green fashion through the refashioning of our plastic waste into wearable
00:47:38.880fabrics. And while there's certainly some form of ingenuity in trying to address our waste problem,
00:47:47.240these quick fixes also perpetuate the ubiquity of plastic. For example, around 70% of what we wear
00:47:54.520today is already made up of plastic. You had mentioned this earlier, but materials like
00:47:58.960nylon, polyester, spandex, and capoline. Now, of course, these non-biodegradable plastic fibers
00:48:06.120are then released into our waters and marine ecosystems through washing. Actually, in fact,
00:48:11.42040% of the plastic released in our washing cycles goes directly into rivers, lakes, and oceans.
00:48:19.120so I'm wondering can you share with us the efforts of keeping plastic or really oil in
00:48:25.620circulation in the fashion sector as well as the short-sightedness of all these new fashion
00:48:31.160innovations well you you had mentioned um you know Matilda and Kate Fletcher's work
00:48:37.000and I really really and I would you know it's a resource people would benefit greatly from
00:48:42.940devouring because one of the basic primary things i've distilled from from kate's messaging um
00:48:51.100and the concerned union of concerned fashion researchers is we must have our consumption
00:48:57.100and double our use times to live within earth's biomes in a way that will sustain our role as
00:49:04.140even existing on this planet think about that you know you double your use time and you have your
00:49:09.380have your consumption and if everyone were to do that especially those consuming quite a bit
00:49:15.880then we might make it so when i think about people coming into this scene especially like
00:49:22.060silicon valley backed venture capital laden sector disruptors i see this all the time
00:49:30.320people who have no idea what sector that they're getting involved in but they came up with some
00:49:35.200newfangled thing um they genetically engineered this new thing and now they're gonna make you
00:49:40.820know the next whatever um or using plastic in a new way like oh well we'll figure out another
00:49:48.340thing to do with this plastic bottle and put it in your yoga pants again there's just really truly
00:49:54.860no need for these new materials or i would say very there's very little need for where i see
00:50:03.560the need for innovation, I would say this, the lion's share, 99% of where we need innovation
00:50:10.640is cleaning up the mess we made and figuring out how to decentralize this system and to break open
00:50:19.880the shackles of centralization and wealth concentration in the industry. That's where
00:50:25.940the innovation needs to happen. And that's like social architecture, financial instrumentation
00:50:30.800development activism uh writers thinkers um avant-garde brands there are some but to me the
00:50:40.540idea that we need new materials is just absurd i mean we just don't we don't need more we need
00:50:47.160we need to use what we have like there's always these people trying to bring more materials into
00:50:51.940the situation and i'm like yeah and i'm sitting on a hundred thousand pounds of wool that you know
00:50:57.300a shepherd just sheared from his sheep that he used to help with a fuel load reduction project
00:51:02.140in California or was grazing in BLM land to help manage goat grass and stimulate wildflower
00:51:08.700populations. Like I, we work with so much material that is actually tied to different
00:51:14.840ecosystem goals and we can just talk about it, but it's yet, it's not, there's nothing new or
00:51:20.260shiny about our work. It's just very, it just is. And so I'm like, well, we've already got
00:51:26.560I mean literally there's no there's no markets for some of the natural fibers we're already
00:51:32.040producing so if you combine that that glut of natural fiber sitting in the market combined
00:51:39.300with the fact that we're over consuming and we even have brands burning their inventory
00:51:44.900because they don't want to let last season's clothing go out on sale or for free because it
00:51:51.060would denude the cachet of their brand so you've got overproduction over consumption and a glut of
00:51:59.920natural materials to me if you do if you're just a mathematician you would look at this and you'd
00:52:04.720say so who said we needed new materials or more plastic i mean i just there's great places that
00:52:12.140i'm sure we could find for all this plastic that we're pulling out of the oceans but it's not
00:52:17.640textiles. Textiles are abraded. They are abraded when they are washed. They create plastic lint
00:52:25.900faster than any other material on planet Earth. And I really think to take plastic and to shred
00:52:33.580it, which is what we do when we make clothing out of it, and to make it more prone to leakage
00:52:38.780into the biology of our planet is just heinous. And yet it's touted as green. It's quite
00:52:47.260backwards sorry I get a little excited about this because I'm so taken aback by the by the level of
00:52:56.200greenwashing of plastic clothing and recycled plastic bottles it's just so old and it's so
00:53:01.180been done and it's just it's got to be done we have to let it go I'm with you I'm absolutely
00:53:08.760with you I what you just said about the shredding plastic to make it even more likely to break
00:53:19.060yeah leaky I mean it's it's really ridiculous and and let alone it's sold as a green solution
00:53:25.760it's so backwards and I can say too in my own experience wearing plastic clothing which I
00:53:32.380I know I have a bunch of from past life choices it doesn't let my skin breathe it makes it actually
00:53:40.640isn't it doesn't feel good on my body even if it actually feels soft like my mom years ago bought
00:53:48.040me this pink polyester robe that feels really soft it's kind of like a blankie that I would wear
00:53:53.860but um yeah it it's it's like wrapping my body literally in plastic and it's really it's really
00:54:03.500strange that we're doing this and to think that um it was found that 94 percent of americans
00:54:09.680drinking water contains plastic microfiber pollution and the production of polyester which
00:54:15.980is used in 60 percent of garments a day consumes 350 million barrels of oil a year and is responsible
00:54:23.020for three times as many co2 emissions as cotton production and it just seems like this highlights
00:54:28.820the bizarre chain in which oil and gas are pushing plastic to keep themselves in business
00:54:33.440thus requiring more fracking more drilling etc thus creating more plastic pollution thus emboldening
00:54:39.960these sort of green solutions and i also think there's something to be said about how many folks
00:54:45.320readily buy these products because of the logic which we're so deeply embedded in which we feel
00:54:50.400like we derive all this choice autonomy from purchasing power, which is, it really makes me
00:54:57.000think of the marketing of it all again, just being, you know, us being so duped. And this has just
00:55:03.440been such a beautiful conversation, Rebecca. I'm so inspired by you. I'm grateful. And yeah,
00:55:10.020you've really gotten me feeling riled up to get involved in this, in this way. So thanks so much.
00:55:16.420Oh, that's so good to hear. Thank you for this wonderful interview. This has been so fun. I appreciate it.
00:55:37.880Thanks for listening to another episode of For the Wild Podcast.
00:55:41.760The music you heard today was from Christopher Watkins and Gun Outfit.
00:55:46.420I'd like to thank our host and founder, Ayanna Young, as well as the rest of our team.
00:55:51.960Ada McRae, Andrew Storrs, Erica Ekron, Aaron Wise, Carter Lou McElroy, Chris Hudson, Francesca Glassbell, Hannah Wilton, and Melanie Younger.