Mother Nature Approved

ECO-FRIENDLY FASHION SPRINGS FROM HEMP, PLASTIC, ORGANICS

Cathy Day began her journey toward eco-friendly clothing with beads and a
hippie band. A friend who was touring with the Grateful Dead introduced her
to industrial hemp. "I didn't have a clue. I didn't know there was such a
thing," said Day, owner of Earth Force, a shop on Marietta Square. "And I
just happened to be interested in beads at the same time."

What she learned was that industrial hemp - a cousin to marijuana - used to
flourish in this country as a fast-growing, low-maintenance cash crop
because of the versatility and strength of its fibers. But political
pressure from competing industries - as well as the presence of small
amounts of the mood-altering chemical THC in its cells - led to the
prohibition of hemp farms for much of the 20th century. Growing the plant
is still banned under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. But buying and
selling imported hemp materials is legal; the plant itself can be grown
without pesticides or herbicides. Hemp twine is extremely strong, so Day
started using it to string her beads. She first sold her creations in craft
shows and then briefly from a vendor cart in North Point Mall. Nearly six
years ago, she moved into a storefront on Mill Street in Marietta.

In addition to tie-dyed clothing and handmade dresses from India, her store
carries men's and women's hemp clothing such as jeans, polo shirts and
button-down shirts, many in the $40-$60 range.

"We're trying to get the word out about hemp," she said. "The thing is,
once you wear hemp, you don't want to wear anything else. It's the most
comfortable fabric - you feel like you're wearing your pajamas, its so soft
and breathable - and it looks really good."

Hemp is not the only option out there for clothing shoppers with an eye
toward the earth. Many retailers sell items made of organic cotton or
recycled materials such as post-manufacturer cotton waste or even
post-consumer plastic soda bottles.

The organic cotton movement is based primarily on one often-repeated
statistic: One-quarter of all insecticides used globally are applied to
cotton crops. Organic cotton products come from farms that eschew
insecticides and other chemicals. Several dot-com retailers advertise
clothing items made of organic cotton.

Outdoor outfitter Patagonia's Synchilla fleece uses recycled soda bottles
as its base material. Since 1993, the company has diverted more than 40
million 2-liter plastic bottles from landfills and saved about 11,000
barrels of oil.

Other companies sell bottle-based clothing as well. Clothes Made From
Scrap, a company in Florida, uses a fabric made of recycled soda bottles
and reclaimed cotton - pre-consumer waste from cotton mills - in its
sportswear. It also sells hats and totes made from 100 percent recycled
plastic bottles.

Company clients include municipalities, government agencies and
environmentally aware businesses, including Disney. Customers may order
items at www.clothesmadefromscrap.com

"The biggest problem we face with the eco-friendly product is the recycled
product costs more than the nonrecycled product," said Graham Jarrett, the
10-year-old company's founder and president. "The general consumer, while
he or she might say, 'We're really into the environment,' they might not be
at the stage where they'll say, 'I'm always going to buy the recycled
product.' . . . The people who maybe make a donation to the Sierra Club,
they're the people obviously who are interested in the environment. What
percentage of the population that is, I don't know," he said. "It's small."

One growing retail niche conserves a different kind of resource: land.
Supporters of leather-free products prefer to wear plastics, even
nonrecycled, over animal skins. While most leather opponents are motivated
by anti-animal-cruelty campaigns, some also believe that the manufacture of
petroleum-based manmade materials ultimately has less negative impact on
the environment than do livestock "factory farms" and grazing areas.

For starters, reports People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the $1.5
billion U.S. leather industry tans approximately 100 million animal skins
each year. Meanwhile, U.S. factory farms produce 130 times more waste than
the entire American population, it says.

There's an even easier way to conserve, points out Bernie Brill, executive
vice president of the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles
Association: Buy used clothes. Although most of SMART's members deal in
bulk donated clothing to be sold overseas, the concept works for
individuals as well: Prolonging the "lifespan" of one outfit delays the
need for a new one to be manufactured, thus conserving resources.

"That is the highest form of recycling" - recirculating a product as-is,
Brill said.

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WHY IT MATTERS

* 46 percent of U.S. counties contain groundwater susceptible to
contamination from agricultural pesticides and fertilizers.

* 14 million people in the United States routinely drink water
contaminated with carcinogenic herbicides.

* It is legal to grow industrial hemp in more than 30 countries
including Canada, Germany, England, France, Spain, Australia, New
Zealand, the Russian Federation, China, Thailand, Hungary and Romania.

* Industrial hemp grows in climates ranging from temperate to
tropical. It requires no pesticides or herbicides. A hemp crop is
usually harvested in 100-120 days.

* 40 billion plastic bottles are produced each year in the United States.
Two-thirds of them end up in landfills.

Sources-- Susceptible Cotton Project, Hemp Industries Association, Hemp
Pages and Patagonia