The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards were held this Sunday. Envirosax would like to offer our congratulations to Mo’Nique for winning best supporting actress on the night. Mo’Nique earned the Golden Globe for her part in the movie Precious, pictured here with Envirosax and also accepting her award.
The actress/comedienne gave a heartfelt acceptance speech for her role in playing an abusive mother. “I celebrate this award with all the Preciouses, with all the Marys, I celebrate this award with every person that’s ever been touched. It’s now time to tell.”
Also nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for her role in Precious was newcomer Gabourey Sidibe.
Mo’Nique carrying Oxford bag 2
Mo’Nique accepting Golden Globe for Best Supporting actress
Gabourey Sidibe, who was also nomintated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for her role in Precious
With the growth of the green economy in the past decade, some companies have cottoned-on to the “feel good” factor that goes with saying their bags are made from recycled materials.
While marketing teams slap high-fives and revel in another highly-profitable, customer-friendly initiative, the consumers and bag-buyers are left with an important question: who do we believe?
Should more care be taken when buying reusable bags from companies who claim they use 100% recycled materials, or bags made from 100% RPET or recycled bottles?
First, the facts: PET is the chemical substance Polyethylene terephthalate, commonly known as Polyester. Prefixing with an R means the polyester contains recycled content. The content can contain either pre-consumer (e.g. factory off cuts) or post-consumer (e.g. plastic bottles) waste.
Upon request, Dr John Schiers of Polymer Analysis in Melbourne conducted testing for Envirosax regarding the true contents of various polyester yarns made from supposedly “recycled content”. Please consider that it’s very difficult to perform a test to tell the difference between genuine RPET and cheap virgin polyester. His conclusions to the tests are as follows:
“It is not possible to determine by testing the actual recycled content of a particular item due to the additives in the fibres (e.g. dyes, lustrants and spin finishes) as they interfere with the results. This testing, along with other research we have conducted, highlights the following: It cannot be claimed that polyester items are made from a specific number of bottles unless evidence is provided on how this was calculated.”
Due to the massive demand for RPET, supply of the material from certified sources is no longer sufficient. There are now many companies in China that produce bottles for the sole purpose of recycling them immediately into so-called RPET. This is green-washing at its worst and amounts to consumer fraud.
As a result of the huge demand, manufacturer prices on certified RPET are considerably higher than that of virgin polyester. If a company claims a bag is made from 100% RPET without certification, but it’s not much more expensive than a virgin polyester bag, then common-sense suggests that the bag probably isn’t made from RPET.
The terminology regarding material composition in some so-called RPET bags is cleverly phrased so that a quick-read indicates the bags are 100% RPET. A careful reading reveals that this is not the case. Phrases such as, “Produced from 100% recycled bottles” actually means the bottles used in the material were recycled, but doesn’t actually equate to a bag composed of entirely recycled bottles.
Without certification, companies may be deceptive in what they declare to be the content of recycled polyester in their product. Currently, and to the best of our knowledge, SCS Scientific Certification Systems is the only company in the world able to accurately test recycled content in material. Without this proper certification other issues may transpire.
While Envirosax were researching companies who make RPET from 100% recycled content, they were quite often presented with fake SCS certificates and fake documentation. Certification ensures that the amount of recycled content in the product has been verified. As testing has shown, it’s not possible to differentiate between a composition of material that may be only 10% RPET and the rest virgin polyester. The significantly higher cost of producing goods made of 100% RPET compels pricing of products upwards. With this in mind, take heed when buying goods that do not display their certification – you may be paying the price of a marketing ploy rather than a greener, more environmentally friendly product.
THE ALL-NEW ENVIROSAX SCS CERTIFIED RPET FABRIC
After four years of researching RPET manufacturers, Envirosax Pty Ltd has gone into a partnership with Unifi Inc of the USA to create its own SCS certified Envirosax RPET. Envirosax RPET is a mix of 55% flat filament polyester and 45% Repreve® polyester (Unifi Inc).
The 45% Repreve® in the Envirosax RPET is made up of 100% recycled content, 80% pre-consumer and 20% post-consumer recycled polyester content (predominantly plastic bottles).
Repreve® is third party certified by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) and Oeka-Tex, and also meets FTC guidelines for recycled products.
The Repreve® process involves converting the pre and post-consumer waste into RPET pellets rather than producing virgin PET pellets. The pellets are the core material used in creating polyester fabric. Essentially, the pellets are heated and stretched to create the filaments that are rolled into yarn and then weaved to make polyester.
The process is so unique the Discovery Channel featured it on an episode of How It’s Made.
Apart from the obvious environmental benefits of using recycled content in the material, the process of creating the fabric as compared to virgin polyester also has many ecological advantages. The method of manufacturing the polyester yarn conserves 3.34 litres of gasoline to every kilo of polyester yarn made. With approximately 25 million tonnes of polyester produced globally per annum, this figure becomes a significant amount. (NOTE: Conservation calculations are specific only to the SCS certified Repreve yarn product which Envirosax uses.)
RPET is a fantastic idea and if manufactured properly can reduce our carbon footprint significantly. However, the industry must be kept honest and companies must be held accountable for claims they make when marketing their goods.
This season enjoy your holidays while remembering to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
Household waste increases by an average 25% over the holiday period with the majority of the refuse being food waste, Christmas trees, cards and gift wrapping.
In the US alone over 2.65 billion Christmas cards are sold each year, 28 billion pounds (12.7 billion kgs) of food is wasted and shockingly half of the paper the US consumes annually is used to wrap gifts. This results in a hefty 4 million tons of gift wrap and bags thrown in the waste.
These figures are made even more astounding when only a very small percentage is ever recycled.
Wrapping gifts in paper was created by Hallmark in early Victorian times. It was a process of the wealthy as the poor could not afford thelavish decorated paper. It originated wh en a prominant store ran out of the usual tissue paper and patterned paper was put out on the shelf in replacement. Before this time gifts were wrapped much more sustainably in material, and even perfected to an art form by the japanese.
So here are the Envirosax tips to reduce unnecessary waste this holiday season:
Put leftovers in recyclable containers, share them with family and friends or donate whole, untouched leftovers to homeless shelters. Where possible, compost leftover food scraps.
Create beautiful, reusable wrapping for your gift with an Envirosax bag, as in our video below.
Thank you to everyone who entered our “What Your Pets Mean to You” contest. The Envirosax staff had a terrific time looking at all of the great photos and reading the wonderful write ups. After much deliberation, it was hard to decide from so many cute photos, so we added a few honorable mentions as well. Here are our winners.
(Winners will be contacted via Facebook by an Envirosax staff member to receive your prizes.)
Funniest: Rudy and Kasper sent in by Megan Yani
Best Dressed: Sam and Cassius as Spiderman and Captain Jack Sparrow sent in by Staci Summers
Owner / Pet Look Alike: “Bearded Buddies” sent in by Marty Heflin
The ‘big 3’ in a customer driven organization is providing ‘quality, cost and on-time delivery’. The latter aside, perceived quality can be very different from the actual quality a consumer is receiving. An online search for the term ‘reusable water bottles’ will bring up a wide array of companies, around 90% of which use the term “BPA free” concerning their reusable bottles.
Since a popular reusable bottle was linked to the chemical BPA (Bisphenol A), the term has been widely reported and has quickly escalated into mainstream media.
BPA is a chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resin. The plastic is used in some food and drink containers and the resin is used as lacquers to coat metal products such as food cans and metal water bottles. There are mixed reports as to the dangers of BPA but it is generally agreed that the chemical does transfer across to food and liquid in older food and beverage containers. The NTP (National Toxicology Program) released a report with their findings, in which they expressed concern with BPA’s effect on the human body, and in particular, on infants and children. NTP Associate Director John Bucher Ph.D concluded that “the possibility that BPA may affect human development cannot be dismissed”.
So it is for good reason that consumers are turning towards products that state they are BPA Free. Despite the fact that the published research is still rather inconclusive as to the detrimental effects of BPA, it is prudent to avoid the chemical wherever possible until a definitive conclusion has been made.
BPA and Water Bottles
When a new bottle is made, testing procedures are undertaken in laboratory conditions to ensure the beverage within the container will stay chemical free. A reputable, certified testing lab will conduct a leaching test at 90C (194F) for 3 days in order to simulate usage and ageing. These are extreme conditions for the bottle and cap. After this time the contents of the bottle are tested for contaminates. It is at this crucial point where labs can differ in the results they present.
Different labs will have different limits as to what they can detect. For a given sample, one lab may not detect BPA due to their testing limits while another will detect BPA every time. Generally BPA is tested in parts per billion or parts per million (abbreviated ppb & ppm). A comparison of results from four major labs showed their testing limits varied greatly. Below is a table showing from top to bottom the most effective testing limits found to the least effective.
Company A (USA)
0.25 ppb
0.00025ppm
Most effective
Company B (China)
200 ppb
0.2 ppm
Company C (USA)
400 ppb
0.4 ppm
Company D (China)
10,000 ppb
10 ppm
Least effective
Company A is able to detect BPA if only 0.25 ppb is found, yet Company D would not be able to detect BPA if the chemical was found to be under 10,000 ppb. These are two modern labs providing results used as certification on consumer goods, yet one is 40,000 times as accurate as the other. It is scary to think that one “BPA Free” bottle could potentially have 40,000 times as much BPA in it as another marked as “BPA Free”, depending on which labs were used to do the testing.
Health Canada and the EFSA Europe have set the following Tolerable Daily Intake for BPA limits per kilogram of bodyweight.
Europe – TDI of 0.05 milligram/kg body weight (eg 70kg person = 3.5mg TDI per day)
A 600ml bottle tested by Company D could theoretically leach up to 6 milligrams of BPA into the water over the testing period (enough to be in excess of the TDI for anyone weighing less than 120kg or 264lbs), and still be called “BPA Free” according to that lab’s standards.
Therefore, it is important when purchasing your bottle that you ask the company what limits they test down to. The claim “BPA Free” is readily used as a marketing tool to imply the bottles do not contain any traces at all. On the contrary, the lab may not have been capable of testing down to the most sensitive limit.
Finally, it is worth noting that a number of bottle manufacturers claim that they are BPA free simply because the bottles are made from stainless steel and have no plastic liner. It may be true that the bottle itself is BPA free, but the contaminates can come from the polycarbonate/polypropylene lids. Whatever part of the bottle BPA may leach from, the hazard could still be there.
This article has been written to give the facts about the industry, which is still largely unregulated. Again it is left down to consumers to sift through the spin. Anyone can claim to be “BPA Free” but unless the company is transparent with their certified testing results, as a careful consumer you should be wary of what you may be purchasing.
From New York to Sydney and everywhere in between, people are carrying reusable bags.
Not surprisingly, large corporations and retailers have jumped on the bandwagon, offering cheap or free reusable shopping bags as a badge of being green.
Unfortunately, these cheap reusable shopping bags are often more of a marketing ploy than a great choice for the environment. To be effective in reducing waste, reusable bags must be able to be reused time and again, and therefore must be extremely durable. Polypropylene bags will decompose after exposure to UV light – below is an example of the affect UV light has on the tensile strength of a polypropylene bag when left in sunlight for 6 months.
Do not be fooled into thinking that polypropylene is an environmentally sound alternative. You may even find the term “biodegradable” on some of these bags (see below), but the standards for use of this term is that the bag must be biodegradable in a ‘commercially managed compost environment’. This unfortunately has little to do with the reality of biodegradability; in real world disposal scenarios, without the controlled conditions specified in these standards, the bags will not break down and biodegrade in a reasonable amount of time and will not decompose to organic material that can be put to use by other micro-organisms, as the term ‘biodegradable’ suggests.
Vincent Cobb (founder of reusablebags.com) recently discussed the futility of reusable bags that aren’t made to last (here). When asked if the solution is becoming a part of the problem, he didn’t hesitate a moment – “Absolutely,” he said, explaining that some are made so cheaply they fall apart after a few uses. “They are becoming more of the junk.”
A cheap non-woven polypropylene bag must be made inexpensively. The construction and material of the bag are of poor quality and they have a tendency to give way after loading them with groceries only a handful of times. Ironically, the ‘reusable’ bags themselves end up in the garbage can.
As a consumer, an additional concern is where and by whom are these bags being made? For the retail price of a “reusable bag” to be $1, the labour and distribution costs must be extremely low. At this price is it possible to ensure all employees and suppliers are treated fairly and in adherence to Fair Trade guidelines?
Using an alternative material such as polyester (which has far better tensile strength properties than polypropylene), printed with the process of sublimation, will yield a more durable bag in which the color will not fade.
Digging a little deeper reveals that many reusable bags are nothing more than another example of green-washing.
A high quality reusable bag eliminates hundreds of cheap reusable bags, and thousands of paper and plastic bags over its lifetime.
Hollywood – a jungle of fashion conscious women and men somewhat clawing their way into the limelight.
But two cool ladies that seem to effortlessly take all in their (regal?) stride are Jessica Alba and Queen Latifah.
Pictured below, the lovely actresses who with a collection of Golden Globes,Grammys, and World’s Sexiest Women awards between them, put their best fashion clad foot forward with the Retro Graphic and Oxford Bags.
We are delighted to launch our new range, La Boheme, which has been inspired by a fusion of the romanticism of Bohemia and the ideals of the Art Nouveau movement. It is about bringing art and beauty into every day life and a celebration of pushing conventional boundaries.
We would like you to help create a story for the new La Boheme range to give it depth and personality.
While our focus is on breathing new life into eco-friendly products with beautiful design, feel free to take this story anywhere you want it to go.
Comment as many times as you like, and any length. Get your creativity flowing. The story can go in any direction…however comments will be edited if necessary if the story goes beyond decency boundaries.
The blog will be ‘live’ for two weeks, at the end of this time the story will be posted across our sites permanently, so your words will be a part of the Envirosax La Boheme story.
To start you may find inspiration from this picture.
So we will begin the story…
Life was starting to get a little hectic for 20 year old Lorien with uni exams, boyfriend giving her grief and parents just not understanding the pressure she was under. She decided to have a break from study and go for a walk in the forest behind her house. She had always loved the quiet, stillness and imagined growing up that it was enchanted, just like in fairy tales. After walking for a while, slowly feeling more calm and peaceful, she came across this beautiful red bag. Her attraction to it was immense and she just sensed there was something special about this bag, something magical…
Fair Trade is an alternative approach to conventional trade that has become recognised as the standard for evaluating the rights of workers in developing nations who produce the products we consume.
It focuses on helping farmers and producers in developing countries to move towards economic self-sufficiency and stability. By paying producers and their workers fair prices and helping them gain the skills and knowledge needed, allows them to have a greater stake hold in their own business, provide safer and ethical working environments and therefore play a wider role in international trade.Fair trade also encourages better environmental practices and the application of responsible methods of production.
It is about providing a fair go – not charity.
A Fair Trade Certified Company ensures that the supply chain down to the production of goods in factories has purchased all their manufactured components from producers and workers that have been treated ethically using the Fair Trade principles.
This covers:
Banning child and slave labour
Guaranteeing a safe workplace and the right to unionize
Adherence to the United Nations charter of human rights
Horror stories are constantly emerging of employees losing limbs in factories, only to receive no compensation and without the ability to work, not being able to afford to go home.An Amnesty International report tells the moving tale of a Chinese woman who had been working 12-hour night shifts in an embroidery factory in Korea, who wrote this on her suicide note:
“Migrant workers are also human beings. Why don’t they pay me for my work? I cannot go home because I don’t have money. I have chosen to kill myself, as there is no other way.”
What you have to remember when purchasing a product from somewhere that states they are a Fair Trade Company is that anybody can claim they are a Fair Trade Company.
Do not be confused by such organizations as the Office of Fair Trading (UK) or the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC). Both of these organizations regulate economic competition law and policies amongst businesses, but have little to do with Fair Trade in the workers-rights sense of the word.
Their mandate is to provide consumer protection, not worker protection. The OFT slogan is to make “markets work well for consumers” and the KFTC website indicates that it’s primary focus is on anti-trust and consumer-protection cases, as does the KTFC’s own byline which refers only to competition laws, consumer protection, and boosting competition.
This has nothing to do with Fair Trade as it is commonly perceived.
To ensure that you are buying Fair Trade these are the only labels that are certified:
To read more about Fair Trade and where Envirosax stands in regards to these ethical principles, please read the full article.
Jessica Alba and Retro Graphic Bag 3
Queen Latifah Oxford Bag 2
