Any colour as long as it’s green.

Wish I could use that Farrow and Balls tagline…

Enter the magical world of natural plant colour. The colours of nature are all around us: plants, flowers, animals, the sky; but it’s notoriously difficult to get those colours onto anything without a lot of time, effort and elaborate processing that may or may not include poisoning everything around you.

I realise that coming up with a half decent natural colour palette is going to require a bit more knowledge than tea-dying t-shirt’s by flinging a couple of teabags in hot water – which was a lot of fun when I was a kid and easier than trying not to stain my mum’s counter tops with those very difficult to get into little Dylon pots…

From a commercial point of view vegetable dyes can be tricky. It’s difficult to replicate colours – the same recipe will produce different colours depending on the water temperature; chemicals in the dye water (like chlorine); or changes in the dye plant material due to different growing conditions etc. Given this difficulty I’m not really surprised that the majority of people working with dyes and colour have opted for much easier to control chemical dyes. You can replicate colour almost precisely, and they don’t run. It’s all very easy to use provided you have a good set of scales and a thermometer, and even the most rudimentary of dye houses in Nepal have these. Unfortunately, unless you also have the facilities to deal with the effluent from the dyes, you will poison your own and your neighbours’ water. And even if you do have proper drainage you’ll be poisoning the rivers and the sea.

We first looked at using the usual ‘azo free’ dyes that everyone else uses, thinking that ‘azo free’ meant they weren’t really bad. We even made up a nice palette of colours and started thinking of getting the recipes made up – I have to say the azo free dye guys are a really helpful bunch. Sense prevailed when we realised that although they might be free of ’azo’s’, they’re not free of the other chemicals that poison the water (rivers, sea, water table – or all of the above). On a visit to Nepal recently we went to see for ourselves the disaster that is the synthetic dye industry in a country like Nepal, which has no infrastructure to deal with the toxic effluence, and therefore no way to protect the ground or water from being poisoned (more on this later). We were chatting in the office (more a shed than the whitewashed, furnished room that possibly sprang to mind at the word ‘office’.) when we noticed rows of jars all full of barks and flowers, so we asked about their vegetable dying. It turns out they don’t really do much vegetable dying any more as none of their buyers want to use them, but they were willing to pull out the old recipes and send us a few samples.

It took 6 months, but Kathmandu dye house sent us 144 colour swatches of natural colour, and we were quite beside ourselves with excitement. Closer inspection reveals there are a few blues, greens and reds, but 70% of the colours are variations on yellow and brown. They’re using an impressive list of natural ingredients (some of them admittedly poisonous), and I feel upbeat about us being able to all work together to get a good range of colours – I’m aiming for 200.

A fortnight of internet research and night time reading has turned up a few saddening facts: many of those lovely colours some people are getting from vegetable dyes aren’t always permanent and fade quickly (turmeric for example); many cannot be fixed and bleed; and some are actually poisonous and should be avoided. That’s just the dyes. As for mordents, if we use all the available mordents we could probably get a good range of nice bright colours, but given that they are mostly also poisonous they are best avoided.

So, with the mountain of knowledge that I was going to have to somehow acquire looming before me, I was relieved to meet Carla, our new dye friend, at the Eden Project when we joined an Oxford Alumni event. As Tim Smit said we‘d halved the average age at the event single handedly, and whilst the others were discussing the pro‘s and con‘s of chickweed, we escaped to the bio domes. Like all the best meetings, this one was unplanned and happened coincidentally whilst rambling around the garden. I learned more from her in 2 hours than I did from that fortnight of internet reading. It’s good to be reminded that the internet isn’t an expert in anything other than downloading web pages. Expertise comes from people.

She sent me home with some homework:
Send her all my samples and the table of ingredients the dye house has used.
Check what water they’re using. Using Kathmandu ground water for the dying as this might be causing the dominance of dull brown (the water in Kathmandu is full of iron, which is sometimes filtered with makeshift sandstone filters – makeshift as in a bucket with holes filled with sandstone rocks)

Ah, so relaxing to just follow orders… If you’re starting your own business I can recommend paying the occasional consultant.

Whilst waiting for some product samples to arrive, I started looking at labelling – we’ll need some. As a way of branding they cannot be surpassed: an instant reminder of who made your stuff. Labelling must also be the least invasive and most cost effective form of advertising there is, and we all know everything needs some advertising – from the timetable of the local yoga classes to how much life Coke adds.

Ideally labels should last as long as the product (which in our case could be difficult to accomplish as our stuff will last generations), and they should somehow ‘fit’ the product.

“Labels can’t be a big deal” I think, naively as it turns out.

I begin by sending out an email to about 15 woven label producers in the UK quite specifically asking if they make organic labels, and if so, could they please email some details to me. Better still, could they send me a sample of one of their organic labels. I received in the post 15 batches of labels, none of which were even made of natural fibres, let along being organic.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt I emailed them back thanking them for the samples, and asking if they had any organic ones. I discovered that no-one is doing woven labels from natural fibres in the UK as the machines are gauged to take a stronger polyester thread. (If they mislead me please let me know…). A few said they could silk screen onto organic fabric, if I could supply the fabric. As I’ve silk-screened before I know that ‘natural’ inks aren’t going to last very long, and so would defeat the purpose of labelling in the first place. However at the back of my mind I wondered if soy ink would print on to organic cotton, and how long it would last.

Instead of panicking, we agreed on a label of last resort, and started a second wave of google searching (remaining mindful that each Google search apparently uses half the energy as boiling a kettle of water (7 grams of CO2), although the official Google blog claims it’s closer to 0.2 grams).

Our fall back label wasn’t really anything novel or remotely ethical, just an ordinary posh natural-looking synthetic fibre woven label that would stand up to lots of wear.
Then chance led us to consider a radically different solution: leather. After all it’s natural. The idea of an ethical company using leather? I knew there would be a few challenges to the idea, but as I’m not shy of debate I thought I‘d test the idea.

My dad was recently in Turkey where they visited a leather factory, and because the factory used vegetable dyes (more on vegetable dyes later…), they were led to believe this was an environmentally friendly factory. My dad loves leaving the beaten track to discover what people are hiding, and so he walked down the river next to the factory. He found toxic waste all along the riverbank, effluent running directly out of the factory. Alarmingly people were still using the river (where else could they go), children were playing in it, and animals were drinking from it (except for the dead animals that is). Water pollution is one of my bugbears, and my personal reason for trying to be as organic as much as possible (no – its got nothing to do with the taste, its got to do with the pollution…)

It appears that even if leather is dyed using vegetable dyes, tanning leather is hugely toxic. Assuming the leather comes from a country with some health and safety policies in place (although most of our leather does not) one can assume that the animals have been killed humanely (if one leaves aside the question of whether growing animals for slaughter is humane in the first place), and one would also assume that there are some guidelines in place to prevent toxic pollution of the environment. However even with these regulations in place it appears the land around tanneries cannot be used for agriculture when the tannery closes. And we all know, what starts on the land ends up in the water, and then rains down upon us.

Here is the list of ingredients typically used to turn leather from skin to hide. To remove the hair sodium sulfide, sodium hydroxide, sodium hydrosulfite, arsenic sulfide, calcium hydrosulfide, dimethylamine and sodium sulphydrate is used. To prepare for tanning sodium chloride and sulphuric acid is used. To prevent bacterial growth biocides such as pentachlorophenol are used, and then the actual tanning uses chromium sulfate (chromium).

Leather, it seems, is far from natural.

Disposing your worn out leather is just as dangerous as making it. Old leather when burnt in council incinerators produce highly toxic and carcinogenic chrome +6 levels. If sent to landfill it will not decompose, and the chromium leaks into the soil.
Some facts to ponder as you put your shoes on: A leather jacket bought recently on the UK high street was found to contain over 50% of the recommended level of chromium. Studies have shown that cases of leukaemia among residents near tanneries are up to five times greater than what is considered to be normal. According to one study (although I cannot find who did the study), more than half of all testicular cancer victims work in tanneries. (Still feel like wearing those leather jeans?)

So ordinary leather is out of the question – no matter how hard wearing it may be.

Given that leather used to be tanned with smoke, I wondered if there was such a thing as smoke-tanned leather, and brilliant, there is! It’s called organic leather.

It appears that organic leather has none of these toxic by-products. Apparently you can eat it (although it might be tough). Organic leather is always a by-product from animals raised organically. It is then cured with smoke and/or tannins occurring naturally in plants and trees instead of chromium and other minerals. A slower but nicer process.

There is very little certified organic leather available, so this might be an expensive option, and I’d be interested to go to an organic tannery and look into the process before I believe there is no toxic output (having been caught out before when believing vegetable dyes meant there were no toxins involved).

In the interest of animals I also looked into vegan leather, but found that it’s made of things like acrylics, polyamides and PVC. Good for animals, but no good for the environment (and therefore surely no good for animals).

If I follow the motto: reduce, reuse and recycle before creating anything brand new, e-leather looks like an interesting option. It’s a process created by a British inventor and entrepreneur that re-uses old leather and tannery leather waste by shredding the fibres and then rebinding them over canvas. Their website claims they use an environmentally friendly process (for which they have received all kinds of eco-awards), that reuses the steam produced to run the process. However although I get that this is better than landfill or burning, I wonder if those chemicals remain in the new product, or if they are released in the fibre-making process. And from their website it seems the e-leather is all re-dyed. So, a good idea for recycling, but perhaps not for us. The only way to be sure is to get some fact sheets and samples and have a look. Whilst e-leather email’s me back, I’ll try to find one of these (elusive) organic leather producers. The leather route is obviously going to be slow process.

I’m not sure if leather labels are going to ‘fit’ our very environmentally and animal friendly products, and so you may wonder (as indeed some of my friends have) why I haven’t already given up on the leather option. My reason is that in terms of its chemical and carbon footprint organic leather in small amounts may be a far more environmentally and indeed animal friendly option than organic cotton. There is an argument some use regarding the meat industry that animals killed in the production of food is essentially inhumane and must be avoided. However, as they are happy to eat vegetables, it appears that killing countless millions of animals (known as pests) in the raising of vegetables is fine. In my mind the size of the animal being killed surely can’t be a factor. Ethically speaking an aphid has as much of a right to life as a cow. We appear to have a bias towards some animals (panda bear charities raise far more money than snake charities, and no-one is particularly concerned for the health of rats). Although producing organic cotton is unquestionably better than producing toxic non-organic cotton, the production and delivery of it still creates a carbon and toxic footprint that ends up polluting habitats and water systems, and in so doing destroys the homes and lives of countless animals. It simply moves the killing out of sight, it doesn‘t prevent it. Not looking at all of this thoroughly for fear of upsetting people would be to apply a green-wash, or a compassion-wash. (ok, relax, that’s my rant over…).

As it happens while looking into pesticide use I found a label company that has made the kind of machinery necessary to weave organic cotton labels, and they also make labels from recycled polyester. They are a pretty big company so trusting them isn’t easy, but I guess that also means they have the money for ‘good’ R&D. They also do biodegradable plastic, reforestation and use ‘eco-processes‘ whatever that might mean. They’re sending some samples and fact sheets as well.

So, no decision as yet, I’ll wait for the new wave of samples and fact sheets to arrive, try to find an elusive organic leather producer (Google has proved unhelpful) and see how the discussion unfolds. I’m interested to see if anyone who would usually avoid leather would be swayed by my arguments that the out-of-sight and ’unintentional’ killing of small animals is no better than outright killing of larger animals. Not just in theory, but in practice. Leave comments below…

I’ll take it all into account, and let you know what unfolds in ‘labels round 2’

To be continued…

Here we are at the first post. It’s taken us years to get to this point (are all start-ups so laid back?), and now the actual work will begin. We’ve decided on our product, we’ve found a great supplier (in a place we like to have holidays…), we’re building a pretty cool website, and now we just need to get the whole thing together.

We’ve decided to be really transparent, and to use this blog to document the trials and tribulations, discoveries and joys of establishing an ethical start-up. We’ll use it as our sounding board where we investigate the options, debate the ethics of one approach over another, and where we’ll no doubt also rail against the muppets of the world. (Ourselves included). Feel free to join in! We will do our beta testing (with all the relevant offers and goodies to entice some beta-testers…), and finally we’ll launch, although to be honest that seems like a distant mountain at the moment.

What ethical means will be a journey of discovery, no doubt even in our shiny new global world ethics changes from one country to another and from one culture to another. Perhaps at the end we’ll be able to answer whether ‘ethical’ can ever be reduced to a simple excercise of ticking the boxes. At the moment, we think not.

We’re hoping to get some help from people who have looked into these things before us and who have their own opinions on such things as compostable ‘plastics‘, printing and dying, fairtrade and organics to name a few.

We’ve decided not to tell you what our company does initially, as the issues we’ll face and the decisions we’ll have to make will be applicable to many diverse and varied situations, and we don’t want to limit the focus and the opportunity to receive your input too early on. Suffice to say we will be selling actual physical products that are not made in Britain (where we live at the moment), and so we will have to investigate the whole gambit of suppliers/ raw materials/ packaging/ air miles etc as well as how we structure the company and how we deal with admin, marketing and sales etc. As we gear up it’ll be difficult to hide what we’re doing, so perhaps we’ll run a competition: first person to guess most accurately will get a free one… (I can promise you’ll like it) obviously this excludes those who already know what it is – friends, family and the like…

One thing is absolutely clear to us, we will not be able to use many ‘off the shelf’ business solutions, if any. We want to investigate everything and to use better solutions for the environment, for animals, and for fellow humans no matter where they may live. We understand we may need to compromise in some areas, and we will look into the reasons for choosing one solution over another. There may be difficult choices ahead, but we’re going to be transparent in how and why we make them, and we’re open to being influenced by others who may have differing opinions. We’ll also need to investigate some unquestioned ethics: of Fairtrade, organic growing, sustainable solutions, and what these things actually mean.

So, at the outset, here is a preliminary brainstormed list (and in no particular order) of what we think we’ll need to investigate. (Those of you who have been down this road before us – feel free to add to the list…we’ll keep it updated)

• Packaging, including reusable and plastic packaging
• Couriers, transport and air miles
• Warehousing and stock
• Systems of delivery
• Hosting and website
• Suppliers of products and services
• Raw materials
• Banking
• Office equipment and supplies
• Work/life balance for us and our suppliers
• Shareholders
• Whether ‘organic’ and ‘fair trade’ organisations are the same as being organic and fair trade.

In a nutshell in order to avoid the greenwash: spurious social and environmental policies and arguments made by companies as a cynical marketing ploy, we want to be able to stand up to scrutiny – both yours and ours. As we look into these and other issues, together we’ll build up a body of knowledge that we hope will be of benefit to others as well.