> Detailed Ecological Criterias
Transport: Garments - Fabrics, laces - Accessories.
Fabric's Fibers : Bio - Recycled - Organic.
After life product recycling
Policy implemented
Labels
Made from recycled materials
Fabric sourcing
Fabrics, lace, embroidery, print : Quality of suppliers - location - compliance with eco standards - Recycling waters facilities - Ecological on going programmes.
Accessories Sourcing
Wires, bones, claps etc...:Quality of suppliers - location - compliance with eco standards - Recycling waters facilities - Ecological on going programmes.
Human safety: Consumer's protection against hazardous chemicals. Brand's labor working conditions.
Brand Ecological Ethic
Packaging
Recycled or eco driven
Advertising
Newspapers, magazines or TV/internet
Garments manufacturing plant
Garments
Style - quality - collection - fitting.
The rates are not linear and there are weight coeficients.
Ecolingerie: The Project.
Ecolingerie.com is a new portal with a growing international audience made of people concerned with ecological issues when buying their garments. Luxury lingerie is related with ecology on several levels :
- Human safety : lingerie is directly in contact with the skin. Organic or so called bio natural fabrics can have lead. Lead doesn't go away with washes when it's in the fiber itself. Dangerous chimicals are used during process for polyester or polyamide fabrics . New laws just banned colors that were on the market for years...suspected now to cause cancer. (Europe only...).
- Heavy water pollution: The main fabrics for garments are made of polyester, polyamide, lycra and cotton. All are processed with dangerous chemicals or industrial colors leaving behind heavily contaminated waters. Tunisia has now 43% of its water resources polluted due to the textile industry.
- More than 40 pieces make a bra, much more than for any sportswear clothing. All of them are manufactured around the World, with more or less concerns about environment. There is no ecological transport management for all these pieces.
- Recycling: The lingerie industry is a mammoth: 15 billion pieces /year sold in the USA, 400 million/ year in UK. Out of these sample figures, 60% of new bras sold are to replace old garments. What happen to these billion of old garments? Certainly not recycled into charity stores... 99,9% of the old garments are not taken care of.
So far, only price driven market has given the directions on how and where to make garments. Most of the brands show a total lake of concerns about the pollution left behind their collection. They widely think that it's the fabric's manufacturer responsibilities to conform with the laws. At Ecolingerie, we don't think so. A brand is fully responsible of all components making the garments as they choose the fabrics and components, and the place of manufacturing.
We are rating luxury lingerie brands with ecological criterias.
The ecolingerie project started in 2008 and is aiming to promote safer and better products for the consumers and the environement.
We believe consumers have the right to know how ethical and ecological their lingerie is.
Our action helps to promote ecological lingerie on the market.
The Ratings
We rate all brands with the same parameters:
- Management : who is the management and what are they up to.
- Transport : the less transport involved, the better.
- Usage of ecofibers or eco friendly materials
- Fabric sourcing
- Accessories sourcing.
- Packaging - Labels
- Advertising
- Global product quality level
- Brand eco driven strategy
Each parameter has a specific weight that we don' t disclose as it changes with time and context :if a brand starts to use local recycled packaging in one country, then we increase the weight of this paramater for this country.
None of the rate are final : they change as the market industry makes step toward eco-friendly..or not.
A few examples of what we like, and we we don't like :
- Production shift from far East back to consumers area : +
- Usage of quality fabrics or eco-friendly fabrics :+
- Quality products: +
- Eco driven brands :+
- Management involved with ecology :+
- Labels made from recycled materials :+
and we d'ont like:
- Brands caring just about profits : -
- Low quality bras : -
- High profile street name / low quality products : -
- Heavy transportation involved during manufacturing : -
Our ratings are tough and a grade of 3/5 is a pretty good score.
Textile is by nature very polluting, but solutions are existing to make it less polluting. Let's do something about it.
> Water pollution due to textile ( in % total water pollution- DBO 2003 )
Tunisia : 43%
Marocco: 35%
Qatar : 29%
Bostwana : 29%
Portucal : 26%
Bulgaria: 22%
Lituhania: 18%
Indonesia : 19%
These numbers are to present some damages, not to put these countries on a black list. They compiled data, unlike the World most polluting countries not listed here.
