2 June 2008
Daily Telegraph
by Jenny Dillon

It's known as greenwash, deceptive marketing ploys designed to lure shoppers into thinking that the products they are buying are good for the environment -- that they are natural and pure, renewable or recycled.

According the consumer advocate Choice, there has been an "explosion of these claims on product labels that are not supported by evidence, are poorly explained or are irrelevant".

"Green claims have become the play thing of company marketing departments rather than helping consumers," said Choice chief executive Peter Kell.

"Choice investigated green claims in 1996 but the situation now is much worse with a proliferation of meaningless green logos and waffle."

In fact, getting genuine green accreditations is a long, exhaustive process that requires certifications and documentation along every stage of a product's journey.

Businesswoman Billie Paris and her business partner Nikki Walker have spent the past four years getting authentic ethical, organic and carbon neutral certification for the cotton T-shirts, cafe aprons and bags they sell through their company Moral Fibre.

When Ms Paris first set out to get involved in helping Third World industries that also met stringent green standards, she began in Vietnam. Various cultural practices made this difficult so she then looked at sourcing goods from an organisation in Peru.

But there she found that the organisation, which was in a very isolated part of the country, couldn't get the full certification for their products because of the exorbitant cost.

Eventually she found all her stringent standards were met in India.

There the cotton is grown along organic principals and certified by either the Dutch-based ECO group or the UK-based Soil Association Organic Standard. There are no pesticides, herbicides, artificial growth regulators, defoliants or other agro chemicals used.

Furthermore, the products have a very low water footprint because the cotton comes from an area where up to 95 per cent of the water for the crops comes from monsoonal rains.

"Cotton requires 20,000 litres of water to grow 1kg of cotton," she said. "That's enough for one T-shirt and one pair of jeans."

The natural source of water reduced the need for fossil fuel-driven irrigation machinery, she said.

Moral Fibre also has an ethical or fair trade certificate from Fair Trade and Fair Wear Foundation.

"To get the fair trade licence you need to be sourcing your cotton from farmers who act as a co-operative and are certified themselves," Ms Paris said.

"You need to disclose every single step in the supply chain, from the ginning to the weaving to the manufacturing to the packing.

"Fair Trade doesn't deal with bamboo, so we went to Fair Wear for that. We require the people we source from to give us their certification details. They'll get a number which we then check. We don't source from anyone who doesn't have that certification."

Ms Paris said there was a growing trend for consumers to ask where products were made, under what conditions, was child labour involved and how was the environment affected during production.

Moral Fibre products are made by women who have been made outcasts in Indian society and given shelter by Franciscan nuns.

The 120 women are paid above the standard wage, given free accommodation, water and electricity and help towards paying their dowries and a lump sum paid after five years of employment to start a home.

But even these women have to be certified.

"Our manufacturers have to get a new certificate every season, every time there's a sale between the farmer and the manufacturer.

"It's complicated, because it's a relatively new industry, especially with cotton."

Back here in NSW where the company is based, Ms Paris and Ms Walker aim to be carbon neutral.

"We're constantly looking at where we can reduce our carbon footprint," Ms Paris said.

It starts off with their products being shipped by sea to Australia rather than flown, and the care labels recommending cold-water washing and line drying.

It's taken four years for Ms Paris to achieve her dream of being truly green. Now the company has just made its first major sale -- 3500 bags to the Broken Bay Diocese for World Youth Day. The nuns would be proud.