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Virginia's post set off a bell for me. I always read her thoughtful posts. She has inspired me to post a more serious item as well. So consider this fair warning, it has nothing to do with fashion, but has everthing to do with where your fashion, food, clothing, shelter and portfolio will be heading.
Let's get SMaRT(er), shall we? (Sustainable Materials Rating Technology) If women have to buy the right stuff for their homes and specify the right stuff for their companies and clients, then it's time we all knew about how to go about that process.
I've been told that the subject of Sustainability is just too hard for we mere consumers and citizens of the planet to understand. Oh paLEEEZE. How about we give it a shot. Women are not only the dominate consumer, but the dominate gender in marketing. If we're greenwashing products it's out of ignorance, not stupidity.
First a quickie class in the issues. Have you seen Story of Stuff yet? (kudos to Annie Leonard). It now has over 2 millions views. It's a great example of what is part of a product's Life Cycle Assessment. LCA's pull the documentation of the carbon emissions, energy and waste pollution generated in the production process of goods together. It tallies the "stuff" that goes into other "stuff". When you know the bottom line of where the energy and pollution is being saved/used/abused that's when you can start to improve it.
SMaRT is a standard that quantifies and puts the info into a balanced rule per se. You can't be certified as sustainable if the you're saving energy, but polluting the water, or using safe processes, but destroying forests. It also factors in social equity like child labor, a company must be transparent with its working conditions worldwide. SMaRT is like playing baseball, once you have the rules, you can play on a T-ball level or major league, but the rules and tools are the same.
To keep everyone above board, SMaRT has third party global certification & auditing through Ernst & Young. It's a label you can trust.
The SMaRT scorecard/matrix categories:
1. Safe for Public Health & Environment (pollution footprints)
- SMaRT requires documentation of Feedstock Inventory.
- SMaRT requires input and output of Stockholm Protocol Chemicals. These are the pervasive baddies which greatly affect our food chain: Aldrin, Chlordane, DDT, Diedrin, Dioxins, Endrin, Furans, Heptachlor, Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) Mirex, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), Toxaphene. You may know them as insecticides, fire retardants or the plastic in product packaging or the backing of carpet. Input covers chemicals going into the product and output is what happens during the making of the product. SMaRT documents over 1200 Stockholm Protocol chemicals across air, water and earth impacting 3600 touch points. (can you imagine how long it would Congress to pass a bill covering that subject?)
- SMaRT gives points for minimizing air carcinogens and VOCs, green cleaning using clean greening procedures,
- SMaRT gives points for minimizing indoor formaldehyde emissions.
Still with me? Moms Rising wants fire retardants out of fabric, foam and carpet because of what it's doing to kids, pets and breast milk. In Story of Stuff, Annie notes that breast milk is the #1 Toxic food source, "toxins in - toxins out." The Center for Environmental Health and Justice wants PVCs out of the system and NOT recycled. They don't want a second chance of putting them into our air, soil or water.
The only way to get these things out of the system is not put them into the system by A) following a standard to start or B) creating a law to ban it after the fact.
2. Renewable Energy & Energy Reduction (carbon footprint issues)
- An energy inventory is required of current usage and renewable usage.
- Points are awarded on an increasing scale for Cleaner and Greener Certification, Certifications for Climate Change Emission reductions.
- More points are given if the supply chain's energy is also renewable. This covers those who provide materials for the manufacturing of the products even if they are located in China.
3. Biobased or Recycled Materials (more carbon footprint and pollution footprints)
- Once again, an inventory of all materials is required. If a company is using PVCs(plastic) to back a carpet, then this is where it
