Building a manual for ethical business
Posted November 6th, 2007 by Thom B.
Working in the garment industry, both starting a business and as my 9 to 5, I've discovered that there is a sore need for some sort of user manual.
It's nearly impossible to find and literature on how the garment industry is run. It seems that the vast majority of relevant information in terms of sourcing, manufacturing, marketing, supply chain logistics, standards and practices, costing and basically everything else that goes into getting clothes on shelves is only available as Tribal knowledge. While our technology grows by the second the way we disseminate information seems to have changed little in 50,000 years. This essentially means that anyone who wants to start their own business really has to spend some time working in the industry to stand any chance of success. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing but mostly what you learn from the experience seems to be what not to do.
Now that I'm trying to do clothing the right way with Last, I constantly run foul of contradictory information or a total lack of information when it comes to making the right choices for a sustainable future.
What I'd like to propose is a sustainable business Wiki to help others (and myself) make the right choices the first time.
Here's one example of the type of difficulty I run into every day when trying to make the right choice.
How do I judge the costs and benefits of using American grown and Milled organic cotton?
I'm of the opinion that as a country we're unlikely to start playing a positive roll in the world until we start taking care of people at home.
With that in mind I feel that anything we can do to keep vocational jobs in the US is a good thing. But....
I just learned that the only reason we even grow cotton in this country is because of the HUGE subsidies the farm bill provides to cotton farmers - they wouldn't make a penny of profit were it not for these subsidies.
Now I really disagree with subsidies and the farm bill in general, hell I'm against the way we approach agriculture in this country in general (rant about farming techniques and health regulations at a later date). So the question I'm left with it should I be buying American grown cotton if it's not an economically viable crop? Now I haven't looked to see if organic cotton is different and to be honest I don't know where to start looking and that's exactly the problem.
That's the sort of information we need to change the way we run our business, the trouble is we simply don't have the time to do the research to make an informed decision, hence we need the wisdom of the masses.
Once we've begun to reach a wider audience we'll work on getting a Wiki up and running. We'll post questions as and when we find them and hopefully you'll answer them. Together we'll create a manual for sustainability without all the dead ends we're currently running down.
only cotton?
Have you only done research on cotton so far? How about hemp? Is it even grown in the US? I don't know this. Hmmmm I do have an idea though. There's this friend of mine I've had for quite a few years, lives in southern Utah. She is super hardcore on spirituality, sustainability, etc. She's the one that gave me the inspiration to even want to use hemp, bamboo and organic cotton. I could give her a ring and she if she has any information on where I can begin looking for answers.
What specific questions do you want heard first? about whether or not Organic cotton is governed by the same regulations, et cetera that conventional cotton is?
As above,
So Below
Hemp
No commercial Hemp is grown in the US. A little is grown in Canada but the vast majority comes from China and Eastern Europe. I have no Idea about European subsidies for Hemp (weather they exist or not) and to tell the truth it's more concerned about elements of the Farm bill that encourage Mono Culture Agriculture than weather or not Cotton growth is a financially viable crop. It was more by way of making the point that what appears to be a positive thing more often than not has an unseen downside that has to be balanced. We'll continue using US grown Organic cotton as I think the plus points outweigh the negative.
What I want most is a resource of accurate information for the various aspects of sustainable business.
critical mass.
The issue is always one of reaching critical mass. How do you reach enough people so that they will be able to contribute to a venture such as this…..before you have enough people to contribute? Somewhere there is a chicken contemplating it’s own egg.
BJ
There is only one thing.
Q&A
So:
All night long I kept thinking about that chicken. If she were looking at her own egg, where would she be? It is rather like the Koan: What was your original face, before your grandparents were born? The chicken must be inside of her own egg to look at it.
But is she the chicken yet?
It is a fact that every female mammal embryo contains all of the eggs she will have during the whole of her lifetime. That means that every mother, while she is bearing her girl-child is also bearing her own grandchildren. Critical mass already exists. If we wait until all of the Grandchildren are born, it will be too late. We can only act where we stand, with what we know. By acting we write the future, and what we will know then. There is no time but the present, and we must act now, here: there being no other place; no other time.
Our constant delusion is that we seek the “Right” answer, as if there were only one. Truly, in our world there are an infinite number of “right” answers to any given question. Some are better now; some are slower; some are tastier. We are deluded when we think there is a “Right” answer, because we are taught to think that way. In mathematics, 1 + 1 = 2. Or so we are taught. But these answers are also “right”:
1 + 1 = 10
1 + 4 = 10
2 x 5 = 14
(Binary, base 5, base 6)
Those answers are all “Right” in their own terms, but not in each other’s.
Instead of looking for the Right way to set up an ethical business, we should, I think, look for the True way to be an ethical business.
The Sufi teach that one must be able to distinguish between what is “Right” and what is “Needed.” I have a hunch that what we are looking for is what is needed.
Look for what is True, and you will find what is needed.
There is only one thing.