If Gore Were President, This is Probably All We’d Care About

The pressure to live a greener life is being felt stronger now than ever before. Every day a new eco-friendly, world-saving consumer good is thrust into the market of the giant superstore that is contemporary America: cleaning products, cars, foods, cosmetics, even Oreos, which, let me tell you, no one eats to sustain anything, except maybe their high BMI. Over-consuming Americans contribute to the pollution of their surroundings in almost everything they do, but recent reports show that you can make a change simply by changing your tee shirt.

Polyester, the most common component in manufactured clothing, comes from petroleum, a fossil fuel that produced over 2500 million tons of carbon dioxide last year alone. The cultivation of cotton, another main fiber in manufactured clothing, uses approximately 25% of the world’s insecticides in its yearly production. The clothing manufacturing process is so detrimental to the environment that most textile manufacturing facilities are considered hazardous waste generators by the EPA.

A new trend is popping up that caters to Americans’ hyperconsuming lifestyle: environmentally friendly clothing. Fleece products are being made from recycled plastic bottles by packaging manufacturer Wellman, Inc. Wellman keeps almost 3 billion plastic PET bottles out of the world's landfills each year, saving over 1/2 million barrels of oil and eliminating 400,000 tons of harmful air emissions, all by recycling plastic bottles into weavable fiber strands. American Apparel, at the forefront of eco-friendly clothing (well, the variety that people actually wear), promotes a clothing line made from 20% recycled cotton, recycles over a million pounds of scrap fabric per year and uses solar panels on all their LA factories. Levi-Strauss, who produced the first sustainable blue jeans, is now using organic cotton, recycled zippers and buttons, and natural indigo dye in all their designs. Brooks shoe company distributes its shoes in recycled boxes, saving 14,285 trees and 5.9 million gallons of water a year. Even the Gap, a company with a shady past in social responsibility, is offering products made with organic cotton for babies, men and women. And for those Internet bargain shoppers, there is even a green eBay, WorldofGood.com, the world’s first eco-friendly online marketplace.

While eco-friendly manufacturing processes are certainly a step in the right direction, the real task lies in the hands of the consumer. This is perhaps one of the first times in which we will be able to rely on our nation’s overconsuming, media-driven nature to hop on the eco-bandwagon and save the planet, one shopping spree at a time. So the next time you’re in the market for a new fleece, check out one of the companies listed above. After all, you’ve probably consumed at least one of the Diet Cokes that were recycled to make it.